A White Rose

1. Dear ministers of the
most high God, you my fellow priests who preach the truth of God and who teach
the gospel to all nations, let me give you this little book as a white rose
that I would like you to keep. The truths contained in it are set forth in a
very simple and straightforward manner, as you will see.

Please keep them in your
heart so that you yourselves may make a practice of the Rosary and taste its
fruits.

Please have them always on
your lips too, so that you will always preach the Rosary and thus convert
others by teaching them the excellence of this holy devotion.

I beg of you to beware of
thinking of the Rosary as something of little importance - as do ignorant
people, and even several great but proud scholars. Far from being
insignificant, the Rosary is a priceless treasure which is inspired by God.

Almighty God has given it to
you because he wants you to use it as a means to convert the most hardened
sinners and the most obstinate heretics. He has attached to it grace in this
life and glory in the next. The saints have said it faithfully and the Popes have
endorsed it.

When the Holy Spirit has
revealed this secret to a priest and director of souls, how blessed is that
priest! For the vast majority of people fail to know this secret or else only
know it superficially. If such a priest really understands this secret, he will
say the Rosary each day and will encourage others to say it. God and his
blessed Mother will pour abundant grace into his soul, so that he may become
God's instrument for his glory; and his word, though simple, will do more good
in one month than that of other preachers in several years.

2. Therefore, my dear brothers and fellow priests, it will not be
enough for us to preach this devotion to others; we must practice it ourselves,
for if we firmly believed in the importance of the holy Rosary but never said
it ourselves, people could hardly be expected to act upon our advice, since no
one can give what he does not have: "Jesus began to do and to teach."
We ought to pattern ourselves on our Lord, who began practising what he
preached. We ought to emulate St. Paul, who knew and preached nothing but Jesus
crucified.

I could tell you at great
length of the grace God has given me to know by experience the effectiveness of
the preaching of the holy Rosary, and of how I have seen, with my own eyes, the
most wonderful conversions it has brought about. I would gladly tell you all
these things if I thought that it would move you to preach this beautiful
devotion, in spite of the fact that priests are not in the habit of doing so
these days. But instead of all this, I think it will be quite enough for this
little summary that I am writing if I tell you a few ancient but authentic
stories about the holy Rosary. These excerpts really go to prove what I have
outlined for the faithful.

A Red Rose

3. Poor men and women who
are sinners, I, a greater sinner than you, wish to give you this rose, a
crimson one, because the precious blood of our Lord has fallen upon it. Please
God that it may bring true fragrance into your lives - but above all, may it
save you from the danger that you are in. Every day unbelievers and
un-repentant sinners cry, "Let us crown ourselves with roses." But
our cry should be, "Let us crown ourselves with the roses of the holy
Rosary."

How different are theirs from
ours! Their roses are pleasures of the flesh, worldly honours and passing
riches which wilt and decay in no time, but ours, which are the Our Father and
Hail Mary which we have said devoutly over and over again, and to which we have
added good penitential acts, will never wilt or die, and they will be just as
exquisite thousands of years from now as they are today.

On the contrary, sinners'
roses only look like roses, while in point of fact they are cruel thorns which
prick them during life by giving them pangs of conscience, at their death they
pierce them with bitter regret and, still worse, in eternity they turn to
burning shafts of anger and despair. But if our roses have thorns, they are the
thorns of Jesus Christ, who changes them into roses. If our roses prick us, it
is only for a short time, and only in order to cure the illness of sin and to
save our souls.

4. So by all means we
should eagerly crown ourselves with these roses from heaven, and recite the
entire Rosary every day, that is to say, three rosaries each of five decades,
which are like three little wreaths or crowns of flowers. There are two reasons
for doing this: first of all, to honour the three crowns of Jesus and Mary -
Jesus' crown of grace at the time of his Incarnation, his crown of thorns
during his passion, and his crown of glory in heaven, and of course the
three-fold crown which the Blessed Trinity gave Mary in heaven. Secondly, we
should do this so that we ourselves may receive three crowns from Jesus and
Mary, the first a crown of merit during our lifetime; the second, a crown of
peace at our death; and the third, a crown of glory in heaven.

If you say the Rosary
faithfully until death, I do assure you that, in spite of the gravity of your
sins "you shall receive a never-fading crown of glory." Even if you
are on the brink of damnation, even if you have one foot in hell, even if you
have sold your soul to the devil as sorcerers do who practice black magic, and
even if you are a heretic as obstinate as a devil, sooner or later you will be
converted and will amend your life and save your soul, if - and mark well what
I say - if you say the Rosary devoutly every day until death for the purpose of
knowing the truth and obtaining contrition and pardon for your sins.

In this book there are
several stories of great sinners who were converted through the power of the
Rosary. Please read and meditate upon them.

A Mystical Rose Tree

5. Good and devout souls,
who walk in the light of the Holy Spirit, I do not think you will mind my
giving you this little mystical rose tree which comes straight from heaven and
which is to be planted in the garden of your soul. It cannot possibly harm the
sweet-smelling flowers of your contemplations; for it is a heavenly tree and
its scent is very pleasant. It will not in the least interfere with your
carefully planned flower-beds; for, being itself all pure and well-ordered, it
inclines all to order and purity. If it is carefully watered and properly
attended to every day, it will grow to such a marvellous height, and its branches
will have such a wide span that, far from hindering your other devotions, it
will maintain and perfect them. Of course, you understand what I mean, since
you are spiritually minded; this mystical rose tree is Jesus and Mary in life,
death and eternity.

6. Its green leaves are
the Joyful Mysteries, the thorns the Sorrowful ones, and the flowers the
Glorious Mysteries of Jesus and Mary. The buds are the childhood of Jesus and
Mary, and the open blooms show us both of them in their sufferings, and the
full-blown roses symbolize Jesus and Mary in their triumph and glory.

A rose delights us because of
its beauty: so here we have Jesus and Mary in the Joyful Mysteries. Its thorns
are sharp, and they prick, which makes us think of them in the Sorrowful Mysteries,
and last of all, its perfume is so sweet that everyone loves it, and this
fragrance symbolizes their Glorious Mysteries.

So please do not scorn this
beautiful and heavenly tree, but plant it with your own hands in the garden of
your soul, by making the resolution to say your Rosary every day. By saying it
daily and by doing good works you will be tending your tree, watering it,
hoeing the earth around it. Eventually you will see that this little seed which
I have given you, and which seems so small now, will grow into a tree so great
that the birds of heaven, that is, predestinate and contemplative souls, will
dwell in it and make their nests there. Its shade will shelter them from the
scorching heat of the sun and its height will keep them safe from the wild
beasts on the ground. And best of all, they will feed upon the tree's fruit,
which is none other than our adorable Jesus, to whom be honour and glory
forever and ever. Amen. God Alone

A Rosebud

7. Dear little friends,
this beautiful rosebud is for you; it is one of the beads of your Rosary, and
it may seem to you to be such a tiny thing. But if you only knew how precious
this bead is! This wonderful bud will open out into a gorgeous rose if you say
your Hail Mary really well.

Of course it would be too
much to expect you to say the whole fifteen mysteries every day, but do say at
least five mysteries, and say them properly with love and devotion. This Rosary
will be your little wreath of roses, your crown for Jesus and Mary. Please pay
attention to every word I have said, and listen carefully to a true story that
I want to tell you, and that I would like you to remember.

8. Two little girls, who
were sisters, were saying the Rosary very devoutly in front of their house. A
beautiful lady suddenly appeared, walked towards the younger girl, who was only
about six or seven, took her by the hand, and led her away. Her elder sister
was very startled and looked for the little girl everywhere. At last, still not
having found her, she went home weeping and told her parents that her sister
had been kidnapped. For three whole days the poor father and mother sought the
child without success.

At the end of the third day
they found her at the front door looking extremely happy and pleased. Naturally
they asked her where on earth she had been, and she told them that the lady to
whom she had been saying the Rosary had taken her to a lovely place where she
had given her delicious things to eat. She said that the lady had also given
her a baby boy to hold, that he was very beautiful, and that she had kissed him
again and again.

The father and mother, who
had been converted to the Catholic faith only a short time before, sent at once
for the Jesuit Father who had instructed them for their reception into the
Church and who had also taught them devotion to the Rosary. They told him
everything that had happened, and it was this priest himself who told me this
story. It all took place in Paraguay.

So, dear children, imitate
these little girls and say your Rosary every day as they always did. If you do
this, you will earn the right to go to heaven to see Jesus and Mary. If it is
not their wish that you should see them in this life, at any rate after you die
you will see them for all eternity. Amen.

Therefore let all men, the
learned and the ignorant, the just and the sinners, the great and the small,
praise and honour Jesus and Mary night and day, by saying the holy Rosary.
"Greet Mary who has laboured much among you."

FIRST DECADE
The surpassing merit of the Rosary as seen in its origin and name.

First Rose

9. The Rosary is made up
of two things: mental prayer and vocal prayer. In the Rosary mental prayer is
none other than meditation of the chief mysteries of the life, death and glory
of Jesus Christ and of his blessed Mother. Vocal prayer consists in saying
fifteen decades of the Hail Mary, each decade headed by an Our Father, while at
the same time meditating on and contemplating the fifteen principal virtues
which Jesus and Mary practised in the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary.

In the first five decades we
must honour the five Joyful Mysteries and meditate on them; in the second five
decades, the Sorrowful Mysteries; and in the third group of five, the Glorious
Mysteries. So the Rosary is a blessed blending of mental and vocal prayer by
which we honour and learn to imitate the mysteries and the virtues of the life,
death, passion and glory of Jesus and Mary.

Second Rose

10. Since the Rosary is
composed, principally and in substance, of the prayer of Christ and the Angelic
Salutation, that is, the Our Father and the Hail Mary, it was without doubt the
first prayer and the principal devotion of the faithful and has been in use all
through the centuries, from the time of the apostles and disciples down to the
present.

11. It was only in the year 1214, however, that the Church received
the Rosary in its present form and according to the method we use today. It was
given to the Church by St. Dominic, who had received it from the Blessed Virgin
as a means of converting the Albigensians and other sinners.

I will tell you the story of
how he received it, which is found in the very well-known book De
Dignitate Psalterii, by Blessed Alan de la Roche. Saint Dominic, seeing
that the gravity of people's sins was hindering the conversion of the
Albigensians, withdrew into a forest near Toulouse, where he prayed
continuously for three days and three nights. During this time he did nothing
but weep and do harsh penances in order to appease the anger of God. He used
his discipline so much that his body was lacerated, and finally he fell into a
coma.

At this point our Lady
appeared to him, accompanied by three angels, and she said, "Dear Dominic,
do you know which weapon the Blessed Trinity wants to use to reform the
world?"

"Oh, my Lady,"
answered Saint Dominic, "you know far better than I do, because next to
your Son Jesus Christ you have always been the chief instrument of our
salvation."

Then our Lady replied,
"I want you to know that, in this kind of warfare, the principal weapon has
always been the Angelic Psalter, which is the foundation-stone of the New
Testament. Therefore, if you want to reach these hardened souls and win them
over to God, preach my Psalter."

So he arose, comforted, and
burning with zeal for the conversion of the people in that district, he made
straight for the cathedral. At once unseen angels rang the bells to gather the
people together, and Saint Dominic began to preach.

At the very beginning of his
sermon, an appalling storm broke out, the earth shook, the sun was darkened,
and there was so much thunder and lightning that all were very much afraid.
Even greater was their fear when, looking at a picture of our Lady exposed in a
prominent place, they saw her raise her arms to heaven three times to call down
God's vengeance upon them if they failed to be converted, to amend their lives,
and seek the protection of the holy Mother of God.

God wished, by means of these
supernatural phenomena, to spread the new devotion of the holy Rosary and to
make it more widely known.

At last, at the prayer of
Saint Dominic, the storm came to an end, and he went on preaching. So fervently
and compellingly did he explain the importance and value of the Rosary that
almost all the people of Toulouse embraced it and renounced their false
beliefs. In a very short time a great improvement was seen in the town; people
began leading Christian lives and gave up their former bad habits.

Third Rose

12. The miraculous way in
which the devotion to the holy Rosary was established is something of a
parallel to the way in which God gave his law to the world on Mount Sinai, and
it obviously proves its value and importance.

Inspired by the Holy Spirit,
instructed by the Blessed Virgin as well as by his own experience, Saint
Dominic preached the Rosary for the rest of his life. He preached it by his
example as well as by his sermons, in cities and in country places, to people
of high station and low, before scholars and the uneducated, to Catholics and
to heretics.

The Rosary, which he said
every day, was his preparation for every sermon and his little tryst with our
Lady immediately after preaching.

13. One day he had to preach at Notre Dame in Paris, and it happened
to be the feast of St. John the Evangelist. He was in a little chapel behind the
high altar prayerfully preparing his sermon by saying the Rosary, as he always
did, when our Lady appeared to him and said: "Dominic, even though what
you have planned to say may be very good, I am bringing you a much better
sermon."

Saint Dominic took in his
hands the book our Lady proffered, read the sermon carefully and, when he had
understood it and meditated on it, he gave thanks to her.

When the time came, he went
up into the pulpit and, in spite of the feast day, made no mention of Saint
John other than to say that he had been found worthy to be the guardian of the
Queen of Heaven. The congregation was made up of theologians and other eminent
people, who were used to hearing unusual and polished discourses; but Saint
Dominic told them that it was not his desire to give them a learned discourse,
wise in the eyes of the world, but that he would speak in the simplicity of the
Holy Spirit and with his forcefulness.

So he began preaching the
Rosary and explained the Hail Mary word by word as he would to a group of
children, and used the very simple illustrations which were in the book given
him by our Lady.

14. Carthagena, the great scholar, quoting Blessed Alan de la Roche
in De Dignitate Psalterii, describes how this took place.

"Blessed Alan writes
that one day Father Dominic said to him in a vision, 'My son, it is good to
preach; but there is always a danger of looking for praise rather than the
salvation of souls. Listen care-fully to what happened to me in Paris, so that
you may be on your guard against this kind of mistake. I was to preach in the
great church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and I was particularly anxious to
give a fine sermon, not out of pride, but because of the high intellectual
stature of the congregation.

"'An hour before the
time I had to preach, I was dutifully saying my Rosary - as I always did before
giving a sermon - when I fell into ecstasy. I saw my beloved friend, the Mother
of God, coming towards me with a book in her hand. "Dominic," she
said, "your sermon for today may be very good indeed, but no matter how
good it is, I have brought you one that is very much better."

"'Of course I was
overjoyed, and I took the book and read every word of it. Just as our Lady had
said, I found exactly the right things to say in my sermon, so I thanked her
with all my heart.

"'When it was time to
begin, I saw that the University of Paris had turned out in full force, as well
as a large number of noblemen. They had all seen and heard of the great things
that the good Lord had been doing through me.

"'I went up into the
pulpit. It was the feast of Saint John the Evangelist but all I said about him
was that he had been found worthy to be the guardian of the Queen of Heaven.
Then I addressed the congregation:

"'My Lords and
illustrious doctors of the University, you are accustomed to hearing learned
sermons suited to your refined tastes. Now I do not want to speak to you in the
scholarly language of human wisdom but, on the contrary, to show you the Spirit
of Cod and his greatness."'

Here ends the quotation from
Blessed Alan, after which Carthagena goes on to say in his own words,
"Then Saint Dominic explained the Angelic Salutation to them, using simple
comparisons and examples from everyday life."

15. Blessed Alan, according to Carthagena, mentioned several other
occasions when our Lord and our Lady appeared to Saint Dominic to urge him and
inspire him to preach the Rosary more and more in order to wipe out sin and
convert sinners and heretics.

In another passage Carthagena
says, "Blessed Alan said our Lady revealed to him that, after she had
appeared to Saint Dominic, her blessed Son appeared to him and said, 'Dominic,
I rejoice to see that you are not relying on your own wisdom and that, rather
than seek the empty praise of men, you are working with great humility for the
salvation of souls.

"'But many priests want
to preach thunderously against the worst kinds of sin at the very outset,
failing to realize that before a sick person is given bitter medicine, he needs
to be prepared by being put into the right frame of mind to really benefit by
it.

"'That is why, before
doing anything else, priests should try to kindle a love of prayer in people's
hearts and especially a love of my Angelic Psalter. If only they would all
start saying it and would really persevere, God in his mercy could hardly
refuse to give them his grace. So I want you to preach my Rosary."'

16. In another place Blessed Alan says, "All priests say a Hail
Mary with the faithful before preaching, to ask for God's grace.' They do this
because of a revelation that Saint Dominic had from our Lady. 'My son,' she
said one day, 'do not be surprised that your sermons fail to bear the results
you had hoped for. You are trying to cultivate a piece of ground which has not
had any rain. Now when God planned to renew the face of the earth, he started
by sending down rain from heaven - and this was the Angelic Salutation. In this
way God reformed the world.

"'So when you give a
sermon, urge people to say my Rosary, and in this way your words will bear much
fruit for souls.'

"Saint Dominic lost no
time in obeying, and from then on he exerted great influence by his
sermons." (This last quotation is from "The Book of Miracles of the
Holy Rosary," written in Italian, also found in Justin's works, Sermon
143.)

17. I have been very pleased to quote these well-known authors word
for word for the benefit of those who might otherwise have doubts as to the
marvellous power of the Rosary.

As long as priests followed
Saint Dominic's example and preached devotion to the holy Rosary, piety and
fervour thrived throughout the Christian world and in those religious orders
which were devoted to the Rosary. But since people have neglected this gift
from heaven, all kinds of sin and disorder have spread far and wide.

Fourth Rose

18. All things, even the holiest, are subject to change, especially
when they are dependent on man's free will. It is hardly to be wondered at,
then, that the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary only retained its first fervour
for a century after it was instituted by Saint Dominic. After this it was like
a thing buried and forgotten.

Doubtless, too, the wicked
scheming and jealousy of the devil were largely responsible for getting people
to neglect the Rosary, and thus block the flow of God's grace which it had
drawn upon the world.

Thus, in 1349 God punished
the whole of Europe with the most terrible plague that had ever been known.
Starting in the east, it spread throughout Italy, Germany, France, Poland and
Hungary, bringing desolation wherever it went, for out of a hundred men hardly
one lived to tell the tale. Big cities, towns, villages and monasteries were
almost completely deserted during the three years that the epidemic lasted.

This scourge of God was
quickly followed by two others, the heresy of the Flagellants and a tragic
schism in 1376.

19. Later on, when these trials were over, thanks to the mercy of God,
our Lady told Blessed Alan to revive the former Confraternity of the Holy
Rosary. Blessed Alan was one of the Dominican Fathers at the monastery at
Dinan, in Brittany. He was an eminent theologian and a famous preacher. Our
Lady chose him because, since the Confraternity had originally been started in
that province, it was fitting that a Dominican from the same province should
have the honour of re-establishing it.

Blessed Alan began this great
work in 1460, after a special warning from our Lord. This is how he received
that urgent message, as he himself tells it:

One day when he was offering
Mass, our Lord, who wished to spur him on to preach the holy Rosary, spoke to
him in the Sacred Host. "How can you crucify me again so soon?" Jesus
said. "What did you say, Lord?" asked Blessed Alan, horrified.
"You crucified me once before by your sins," answered Jesus,
"and I would willingly be crucified again rather than have my Father
offended by the sins you used to commit. You are crucifying me again now
because you have all the learning and understanding that you need to preach my
Mother's Rosary, and you are not doing it. If you only did that, you could
teach many souls the right path and lead them away from sin. But you are not
doing it, and so you yourself are guilty of the sins that they commit."

This terrible reproach made
Blessed Alan solemnly resolve to preach the Rosary unceasingly.

20. Our Lady also said to him one day to inspire him to preach the
Rosary more and more, "You were a great sinner in your youth, but I
obtained the grace of your conversion from my Son. Had such a thing been
possible, I would have liked to have gone through all kinds of suffering to
save you, because converted sinners are a glory to me. And I would have done
that also to make you worthy of preaching my Rosary far and wide."

Saint Dominic appeared to
Blessed Alan as well and told him of the great results of his ministry: he had
preached the Rosary unceasingly, his sermons had borne great fruit and many
people had been converted during his missions.

He said to Blessed Alan,
"See what wonderful results I have had through preaching the Rosary. You
and all who love our Lady ought to do the same so that, by means of this holy
practice of the Rosary, you may draw all people to the real science of the
virtues."

Briefly, then, this is the
history of how Saint Dominic established the holy Rosary and of how Blessed
Alan de la Roche restored it.

Fifth Rose

21. Strictly speaking, there can be only one kind of Confraternity of
the Rosary, that is, one whose members agree to say the entire Rosary of 150
Hail Marys every day. However, considering the fervour of those who say it, we
may distinguish three kinds: Ordinary Membership, which entails saying the
complete Rosary once a week; Perpetual Membership, which requires it to be said
only once a year; Daily Membership, which obliges one to say it all every day,
that is, the fifteen decades made up of 150 Hail Marys.

None of these oblige under
pain of sin. It is not even a venial sin to fail in this duty because such an
undertaking is entirely voluntary and supererogatory. Needless to say, people
should not join the Confraternity if they do not intend to fulfil their
obligation by saying the Rosary as often as is required, without, however,
neglecting the duties of their state in life.

So whenever the Rosary
clashes with a duty of one's state in life, holy as the Rosary is, one must
give preference to the duty to be performed. Similarly, sick people are not
obliged to say the whole Rosary or even part of it if this effort might tire
them and make them worse.

If you have been unable to
say it because of some duty required by obedience or because you genuinely
forgot, or because of some urgent necessity, you have not committed even a
venial sin. You will then receive the benefits of the Confraternity just the
same, sharing in the graces and merits of your brothers and sisters in the
Rosary, who are saying it throughout the world.

And, my dear Catholic people,
even if you fail to say your Rosary out of sheer carelessness or laziness, as
long as you do not have any formal contempt for it, you do not sin, absolutely
speaking, but you forfeit your participation in the prayers, good works and
merits of the Confraternity. Moreover, because you have not been faithful in
things that are little and of supererogation, almost without knowing it you may
fall into the habit of neglecting big things, such as those duties which bind
under pain of sin; for "He that scorns small things shall fall little by
little."

Sixth Rose

22. From the time Saint Dominic established the devotion to the holy
Rosary up to the time when Blessed Alan de la Roche re-established it in 1460,
it has always been called the Psalter of Jesus and Mary. This is because it has
the same number of Hail Marys as there are psalms in the Book of the Psalms of
David. Since simple and uneducated people are not able to say the Psalms of
David, the Rosary is held to be just as fruitful for them as David's Psalter is
for others.

But the Rosary can be
considered to be even more valuable than the latter for three reasons:

1. Firstly, because the
Angelic Psalter bears a nobler fruit, that of the Word incarnate, whereas
David's Psalter only prophesies his
coming;

2. Just as the real thing is
more important than its prefiguration and the body surpasses the shadow, so the
Psalter of our Lady is greater than David's Psalter, which did no more than
prefigure it;

3. Because our Lady's Psalter
or the Rosary made up of the Our Father and Hail Mary is the direct work of the
Blessed Trinity.

Here is what the learned
Carthagena says about it:

The scholarly writer of Aix-la-Chapelle
says in his book, The Rose Crown, dedicated to the Emperor
Maximilian: "It cannot be maintained that Salutation of Mary is a recent
innovation. It spread almost with the Church itself. For at the very beginnings
of the Church the more educated members of the faithful celebrated the praises
of God in the 150 psalms of David. The ordinary people, who encountered more
difficulty in divine service, thus conceived a holy emulation of them.... They
considered, which is indeed true, that the heavenly praises of the Rosary
contained all the divine secrets of the psalms, for, if the psalms sing of the
one who is to come, the Rosary proclaims him as having come.

"That is how they began
to call their prayer of 150 Salutations 'The Psalter of Mary,' and to precede
each decade with an Our Father, as was done by those who recited the
psalms."

23. The Psalter or Rosary of our Lady is divided into three chaplets
of five decades each, for the following reasons:

1. to honour the three
persons of the Blessed Trinity;

2 to honour the life, death
and glory of Jesus Christ;

3. to imitate the Church
triumphant, to help the members of the Church militant, and to bring relief to
the Church suffering;

4. to imitate the three
groups into which the psalms are divided, the first being for the purgative
life, the second for the illuminative life, and the third for the unitive life;

5. to give us graces in
abundance during life, peace at death, and glory in eternity.

Seventh Rose

24. Ever since Blessed Alan de la Roche re-established this devotion,
the voice of the people, which is the voice of God, gave it the name of the
Rosary, which means "crown of roses." That is to say that every time
people say the Rosary devoutly they place on the heads of Jesus and Mary 153
white roses and sixteen red roses. Being heavenly flowers, these roses will
never fade or lose their beauty.

Our Lady has approved and
confirmed this name of the Rosary; she has revealed to several people that each
time they say a Hail Mary they are giving her a beautiful rose, and that each
complete Rosary makes her a crown of roses.

25. The Jesuit brother, Alphonsus Rodriguez, used to say his Rosary
with such fervour that he often saw a red rose come out of his mouth at each
Our Father, and a white rose at each Hail Mary, both equal in beauty and
differing only in colour.

The chronicles of St. Francis
tell of a young friar who had the praiseworthy habit of saying this crown of
our Lady every day before dinner. One day, for some reason or other, he did not
manage to say it. The refectory bell had already been rung when he asked the
Superior to allow him to say it before coming to the table, and, having
obtained permission, he withdrew to his cell to pray.

After he had been gone a long
time, the Superior sent another friar to fetch him, and he found him in his
room bathed in a heavenly light in the presence of our Lady and two angels.
Beautiful roses kept issuing from his mouth at each Hail Mary, and the two
angels were taking them one by one and placing them on our Lady's head, while
she smilingly accepted them. Finally, two other friars who had been sent to
find out what had happened to the first two saw the same scene, and our Lady
did not leave until the whole Rosary had been said.

So the complete Rosary is a
large crown of roses and each chaplet of five decades is a little wreath of
flowers or a little crown of heavenly roses which we place on the heads of
Jesus and Mary. The rose is the queen of flowers, and so the Rosary is the rose
of devotions and the most important one.

Eighth Rose

26. It is scarcely possible for me to put into words how our Lady
esteems the Rosary and how she prefers it to all other devotions. Nor can I
sufficiently express how wonderfully she rewards those who work to make known
the devotion, to establish it and spread it nor, on the other hand, how
strictly she punishes those who work against it.

St. Dominic had nothing more
at heart during his life than to praise our Lady, to preach her greatness, and
to inspire everybody to honour her by saying her Rosary. As a reward he
received countless graces from her. This powerful Queen of heaven crowned his
labours with many miracles and prodigies. God always granted him what he asked
through our Lady. The greatest favour of all was that she helped him to crush
the Albigensian heresy and made him the founder and patriarch of a great
religious order.

27. As for Blessed Alan de la Roche, who restored the devotion of the
Rosary, he received many privileges from our Lady; she graciously appeared to
him several times to teach him how to work out his salvation, to become a good
priest and perfect religious, and how to pattern himself on our Lord.

He used to be horribly
tempted and persecuted by devils, and then a deep sadness would fall upon him and
sometimes he would be near to despair. But our Lady always comforted him by her
presence, which banished the clouds of darkness from his soul.

She taught him how to say the
Rosary, explaining its value and the fruits to be gained by it; and she gave him
a great and glorious privilege, which was the honour of being called her new
spouse. As a token of her chaste love for him, she placed a ring upon his
finger and a necklace made of her own hair about his neck and gave him a
Rosary.

Fr. Tritème, the learned
Carthagena and Martin of Navarre, as well as others, have spoken of him in
terms of highest praise. Blessed Alan died at Zwolle, in Flanders, on September
8th, 1475, after having brought more than a hundred thousand people into the
Confraternity.

28. Blessed Thomas of St. John was well known for his sermons on the
holy Rosary, and the devil, jealous of his success, tortured him so much that
he fell ill and was sick for such a long time that the doctors gave him up. One
night, when he really thought he was dying, the devil appeared to him in the
most terrible form imaginable. There was a picture of our Lady near his bed; he
looked at it and cried with all his heart and soul and strength, "Help me,
save me, my dearest Mother." No sooner had he said this than the picture
seemed to come alive and our Lady put out her hand, took him by the arm and
said, "Do not be afraid, Thomas my son, here I am and I am going to save
you; get up now and go on preaching my Rosary as you used to do. I promise to
shield you from your enemies."

When our Lady said this, the
devil fled and Blessed Thomas got up, finding himself in perfect health. He
then thanked our Lady with tears of joy. He resumed his Rosary apostolate, and
his sermons were wonderfully successful.

29. Our Lady not only blesses those who preach her Rosary but she
highly rewards all those who, by their example, get others to say it.

Alphonsus, King of Leon and
Galicia, very much wanted all his servants to honour the Blessed Virgin by
saying the Rosary, so he used to hang a large rosary on his belt, though he
never said it himself. Nevertheless, his wearing it encouraged his courtiers to
say the Rosary devoutly.

One day the King fell
seriously ill and when he was given up for dead he found himself, in spirit, before
the judgment-seat of our Lord. Many devils were there accusing him of all the
sins he had committed, and our Lord was about to condemn him when our Lady came
forward to speak in his favour. She called for a pair of scales and had his
sins placed in one of the balances, while she put the large rosary which he had
always worn on the other scale, together with all the rosaries that had been
said through his example. It was found that the Rosaries weighed more than his
sins.

Looking at him with great
kindness, our Lady said, "As a reward for the little service you did for
me in wearing my rosary, I have obtained a great grace for you from my Son.
Your life will be spared for a few more years. See that you spend those years
wisely, and do penance."

When the King regained
consciousness he cried out, "Blessed be the Rosary of the most holy Virgin
Mary, by which I have been de-livered from eternal damnation."

After he had recovered his
health, he spent the rest of his life in spreading devotion to the Rosary, and
said it faithfully every day.

People who love the Blessed
Virgin ought to follow the example of King Alphonsus and that of the saints
whom I have mentioned, so that they too may win other souls for the
Confraternity of the Holy Rosary. They will receive great graces here on earth
and finally eternal life. "Those who explain me will have life
everlasting."

Ninth Rose

30. It is very wicked indeed and unjust to hinder the progress of the
Confraternity of the Holy Rosary. God has severely punished many of those who
have been so benighted as to scorn the Confraternity and have sought to destroy
it.

Even though God has set his
seal of approval on the Rosary by many miracles, and though it has been
approved by the Church in many papal bulls, there are only too many people who
are against the holy Rosary today. Such are free-thinkers and those who scorn
religion, who either condemn the Rosary or try to turn others away from it.

It is easy to see that they
have absorbed the poison of hell and that they are inspired by the devil; for
no one can condemn devotion to the holy Rosary without condemning all that is
most holy in the Catholic faith, such as the Lord's prayer, the Hail Mary and
the mysteries of the life, death and glory of Jesus Christ and his holy Mother.

These freethinkers, who
cannot bear to have people saying the Rosary, often fall into an heretical
state of mind without realizing it and come to hate the Rosary and its
mysteries.

To have a loathing for
confraternities is to fall away from God and true piety, for our Lord himself
has told us that he is always in the midst of those who are gathered together
in his name. No good Catholic would neglect the many great indulgences which
the Church has granted to confraternities. Finally, to dissuade others from
joining the Rosary Confraternity is to be an enemy of souls, because the Rosary
is a means of avoiding sin and leading a good life.

St. Bonaventure says in his
"Psalter" that whoever neglects our Lady will die in his sins. What,
then, must be the punishment in store for those who turn people away from
devotion to her?

Tenth Rose

31. While St. Dominic was preaching the Rosary in Carcassone, a
heretic made fun of his miracles and the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, and
this prevented other heretics from being converted. As a punishment God allowed
fifteen thousand devils to enter the man's body.

His parents took him to
Father Dominic to be delivered from the evil spirits. He started to pray and he
begged everyone who was there to say the Rosary out loud with him, and at each
Hail Mary our Lady drove a hundred devils out of the man, and they came out in
the form of red-hot coals.

After he had been delivered,
he abjured his former errors, was converted and joined the Rosary
Confraternity. Several of his associates did the same, having been greatly
moved by his punishment and by the power of the Rosary.

32. The learned Franciscan, Carthagena, as well as several other
authors, says that an extraordinary event took place in 1482. The venerable Fr.
James Sprenger and the religious of his order were zealously working to
re-establish devotion to the Rosary and its Confraternity in the city of
Cologne. Unfortunately, two priests who were famous for their preaching ability
were jealous of the great influence they were exerting through preaching the
Rosary. These two Fathers spoke against this devotion whenever they had a
chance, and as they were very eloquent and had a great reputation, they
persuaded many people not to join the Confraternity. One of them, the better to
achieve his wicked end, wrote a special sermon against the Rosary and planned
to give it the following Sunday. But when the time came for the sermon he did
not appear and, after a certain amount of waiting, someone went to fetch him.
He was found to be dead, and he had evidently died without anyone to help him.

After persuading himself that
this death was due to natural causes, the other priest decided to carry out his
friend's plan and give a similar sermon on another day, hoping to put an end to
the Confraternity of the Rosary. However, when the day came for him to preach
and it was time to give the sermon, God punished him by striking him down with
paralysis which deprived him of the use of his limbs and of his power of
speech.

At last he admitted his fault
and that of his friend and in his heart he silently besought our Lady to help
him. He promised that if only she would cure him, he would preach the Rosary
with as much zeal as that with which he had formerly fought against it. For
this end he implored her to restore his health and his speech, which she did,
and finding himself instantaneously cured he rose up like another Saul, a
persecutor turned defender of the holy Rosary. He publicly acknowledged his
former error and ever afterwards preached the wonders of the Rosary with great
zeal and eloquence.

33. I am quite sure that freethinkers and ultra-critical people of
today will question the truth of the stories in this little book, as they
question most things, but all I have done has been to copy them from very good
contemporary authors and, in part, from a book written a short time ago, The
Mystical Rose-tree, by Fr. Antonin Thomas, O.P.

Everyone knows that there are
three different kinds of faith by which we believe different kinds of stories.
To stories from Holy Scripture we owe divine faith; to stories on non-religious
subjects which are not against common sense and are written by trustworthy
authors, we pay the tribute of human faith; and to stories about holy subjects
which are told by good authors and are not in any way contrary to reason, to
faith or to morals (even though they may sometimes deal with happenings which
are above the ordinary), we pay the tribute of a pious faith.

I agree that we must be
neither too credulous nor too critical, and that we should keep a happy medium
in all things in order to find just where truth and virtue lie. But on the
other hand, I know equally well that charity easily leads us to believe all
that is not contrary to faith or morals: "Charity believes all
things," in the same way as pride induces us to doubt even well
authenticated stories on the plea that they are not to be found in Holy
Scripture.

This is one of the devil's
traps; heretics of the past who denied tradition have fallen into it, and over-critical
people of today are falling into it too, without even realizing it. People of
this kind refuse to believe what they do not understand or what is not to their
liking, simply because or their own spirit of pride and independence.

SECOND DECADE
The surpassing merit of the Rosary as seen in the prayers which compose it.

Eleventh Rose [The Creed]

34. The Creed or the Symbol of the Apostles, which is said on the
crucifix of the rosary, is a holy summary of all the Christian truths. It is a
prayer that has great merit, because faith is the root, foundation and
beginning of all Christian virtues, of all eternal virtues, and of all prayers
that are pleasing to God. "Anyone who comes to God must believe," and
the greater his faith the more merit his prayer will have, the more powerful it
will be, and the more it will glorify God.

I shall not take time here to
explain the Creed word for word, but I cannot resist saying that the first
words, "I believe in God," are wonderfully effective as a means of
sanctifying our souls and putting the devils to rout, because these words
contain the acts of the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity.

It was by saying these words
that many saints overcame temptations, especially those against faith, hope or
charity, either during their lifetime or at the hour of their death. They were
also the last words of St. Peter, Martyr. A heretic had cleft his head in two
by a blow of his sword, and although St. Peter was at his last gasp, he managed
to trace these words in the sand with his finger.

35. The holy Rosary contains many mysteries of Jesus and Mary, and
since faith is the only key which opens up these mysteries for us, we must
begin the Rosary by saying the Creed very devoutly, and the stronger our faith
the more merit our Rosary will have.

This faith must be lively and
informed by charity; in other words, to recite the Rosary properly it is
necessary to be in God's grace, or at least seeking it. This faith must be
strong and constant, that is, one must not be looking for sensible devotion and
spiritual consolation in the recitation of the Rosary; nor should one give it
up because the mind is flooded with countless involuntary distractions, or
because one experiences a strange distaste in the soul or an almost continual
and oppressive fatigue of the body. Neither feelings, nor consolation, nor
sighs, nor transports, nor the continual attention of the imagination are
needed; faith and good intentions are quite enough. Sola fides sufficit.

Twelfth Rose [The Our Father]

36. The Our Father or the Lord's Prayer derives its great value above
all from its author, who is neither a man nor an angel, but the King of angels
and of men, our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Cyprian says it was necessary that he
who came to give us the life of grace as our Saviour should teach us the way to
pray as our heavenly Master.

The beautiful order, the
tender forcefulness and the clarity of this divine prayer pay tribute to our
divine Master's wisdom. It is a short prayer but can teach us so very much, and
it is well within the grasp of uneducated people, while scholars find it a
continual source of investigation into the mysteries of God.

The Our Father contains all
the duties we owe to God, the acts of all the virtues and the petitions for all
our spiritual and corporal needs. Tertullian says that the Our Father is a
summary of the New Testament. Thomas a Kempis says that it surpasses all the
desires of all the saints; that it is a condensation of all the beautiful
sayings of all the psalms and canticles; that in it we ask God for everything
that we need, that by it we praise him in the very best way; that by it we lift
up our souls from earth to heaven and unite them closely to God.

37. St. John Chrysostom says that we cannot be our Master's disciples
unless we pray as he did and in the way that he showed us. Moreover, God the
Father listens more willingly to the prayer that we have learned from his Son
rather than those of our own making, which have all our human limitations.

We should say the Our Father
with the certitude that the eternal Father will hear us because it is the
prayer of his Son, whom he always hears, and because we are his members. God
will surely grant our petitions made through the Lord's Prayer because it is
impossible to imagine that such a good Father could refuse a request couched in
the language of so worthy a Son, reinforced by his merits, and made at his
behest.

St. Augustine assures us that
whenever we say the Our Father devoutly our venial sins are forgiven. The just
man falls seven times, and in the Lord's Prayer he will find seven petitions
which will both help him to avoid lapses and protect him from his spiritual
enemies. Our Lord, knowing how weak and helpless we are, and how many
difficulties we endure, made his prayer short and easy to say, so that if we
say it devoutly and often, we can be sure that God will quickly come to our
aid.

38. I have a word for you, devout souls who pay little attention to
the prayer that the Son of God gave us himself and asked us all to say: It is
high time for you to change your way of thinking. You only esteem prayers that
men have written, as though anybody, even the most inspired man in the whole
world, could possibly know more about how we ought to pray than Jesus Christ himself!
You look for prayers in books written by other men almost as though you were
ashamed of saying the prayer that our Lord told us to say.

You have managed to convince
yourself that the prayers in those books are for scholars and for the rich, and
that the Rosary is only for women and children and the poor people. As if the
prayers and praises you have been reading were more beautiful and more pleasing
to God than those which are to be found in the Lord's Prayer! It is a very
dangerous temptation to lose interest in the prayer that our Lord gave us and
to take up prayers that men have written instead.

Not that I disapprove of
prayers that saints have written to encourage the faithful to praise God, but
it is not to be endured that they should prefer these to the prayer which was
uttered by Wisdom incarnate. If they ignore this prayer, it is as though they
passed by the spring to go to the brook, and refusing the clear water, they
drink instead that which is dirty. For the Rosary, made up of the Lord's Prayer
and the Hail Mary, is this clear and ever-flowing water which comes from the
fountain of grace, whereas other prayers which they look for in books are
nothing but tiny streams which spring from this fountain.

39. People who say the Lord's Prayer carefully, weighing every word
and meditating on them, may indeed call themselves blessed, for they find
therein everything that they need or can wish for.

When we say this wonderful
prayer, we touch God's heart at the very outset by calling him by that sweet
name of Father.

"Our Father," he is
the dearest of fathers: all-powerful in his creation, wonderful in the way he
maintains the world, completely lovable in his divine Providence, all good and
infinitely so in the Redemption. We have God for our Father, so we are all
brothers, and heaven is our homeland and our heritage. This should be more than
enough to teach us to love God and our neighbour, and to be detached from the
things of this world.

So we ought to love our
heavenly Father and say to him over and over again: "Our Father who art in
heaven" -

Thou who dost fill heaven and
earth
with
the immensity of thy being,
Thou
who art present everywhere:
Thou
who art in the saints by thy glory,
in
the damned by thy justice,
in
the good by thy grace,
in
sinners by the patience
with
which thou dost tolerate them,
grant
that we may always remember
that
we come from thee;
grant
that we may live as thy true children;
that
we may direct our course towards thee alone
with
all the ardour of our soul.

"Hallowed by thy
name." The name of the Lord is holy and to be feared, said the
prophet-king David, and heaven, according to Isaiah, echoes with the praises of
the seraphim who unceasingly praise the holiness of the Lord, God of hosts.

We ask here that all the
world may learn to know and adore the attributes of our God, who is so great
and so holy. We ask that he may be known, loved and adored by pagans, Turks,
Jews, barbarians and all infidels; that all men may serve and glorify him by a
living faith, a staunch hope, a burning charity, and by the renouncing of all
erroneous beliefs. In short, we pray that all men may be holy because our God
himself is holy.

"Thy kingdom come."
That is to say: May you reign in our souls by your grace, during life, so that
after death we may be found worthy to reign with thee in thy kingdom, in
perfect and unending bliss; that we firmly believe in this happiness to come;
we hope for it and we expect it, because God the Father has promised it in his
great goodness, and because it was purchased for us by the merits of God the
Son; and it has been made known to us by the light of the Holy Spirit.

"Thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven." As Tertullian says, this sentence does not mean
in the least that we are afraid of people thwarting God's designs, because
nothing whatsoever can happen without divine Providence having foreseen it and
having made it fit into his plans beforehand. No obstruction in the whole world
can possibly prevent the will of God from being carried out.

Rather, when we say these
words, we ask God to make us humbly resigned to all that he has seen fit to
send us in this life. We also ask him to help us to do, in all things and at
all times, his holy will, made known to us by the commandments, promptly, lovingly
and faithfully, as the angels and the blessed do in heaven.

40. "Give us this day our daily bread." Our Lord teaches us
to ask God for everything that we need, whether in the spiritual or the
temporal order. By asking for our daily bread, we humbly admit our own poverty
and insufficiency, and pay tribute to our God, knowing that all temporal goods
come from his Providence. When we say bread we ask for that which is necessary
to live; and, of course that does not include luxuries.

We ask for this bread today,
which means that we are concerned only for the present, leaving the morrow in
the hands of Providence.

And when we ask for our daily
bread, we recognize that we need God's help every day and that we are entirely
dependent upon him for his help and protection.

"Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Every sin, says
St. Augustine and Tertullian, is a debt which we contract with God, and he in
his justice requires payment down to the last farthing. Unfortunately we all
have these sad debts.

No matter how many they may
be, we should go to God with all confidence and with true sorrow for our sins,
saying, "Our Father who art in heaven, forgive us our sins of thought and
those of speech, forgive us our sins of commission and of omission which make
us infinitely guilty in the eyes of thy justice.

"We dare to ask this
because thou art our loving and merciful Father, and because we have forgiven
those who have offended us, out of obedience to you and out of charity.

"Do not permit us, in
spite of our infidelity to thy graces, to give in to the temptations of the
world, the devil, and the flesh.

"But deliver us from
evil." The evil of sin, from the evil of temporal punishment and of
everlasting punishment, which we have rightly deserved.

"Amen." This word
at the end of the Our Father is very consoling, and St. Jerome says that it is
a sort of seal of approbation that God puts at the end of our petitions to
assure us that he will grant our requests, as though he himself were answering:

"Amen! May it be as you
have asked, for truly you have obtained what you asked for." That is what
is meant by this word: Amen.

Thirteenth Rose

41. Each word of the Lord's Prayer is a tribute we pay to the
perfections of God. We honour his fecundity by the name of Father.

Father,
thou
who throughout eternity
dost
beget a Son
who
is God like thee,
eternal,
consubstantial with thee,
who
is of the very same essence as thee;
and
is of like power
and
goodness
and
wisdom
as
thou art....
Father
and Son,
who,
from your mutual love,
produce
the Holy Spirit,
who
is God like unto you;
three
persons
but
one God.

Our Father. This means that
he is the Father of mankind, because he has created us and continues to sustain
us, and because he has redeemed us. He is also the merciful Father of sinners,
the Father who is the friend of the just, and the glorious Father of the
blessed in heaven.

When we say Who art, we
honour by these words the infinity and immensity and fullness of God's essence.
God is rightly called "He who is;" that is to say, he exists of
necessity, essentially, and eternally, because he is the Being of beings and
the cause of all beings. He possesses within himself, in a super-eminent
degree, the perfections of all beings, and he is in all of them by his essence,
by his presence and by his power, but without being bounded by their
limitations. We honour his sublimity and his glory and his majesty by the words
Who art in heaven, that is to say, seated as on thy throne, holding sway over
all men by thy justice.

When we say Hallowed be thy
Name, we worship God's holiness; and we make obeisance to his kingship and bow
to the justice of his laws by the words Thy kingdom come, praying that men will
obey him on earth as the angels do in heaven.

We show our trust in his
Providence by asking for our daily bread, and we appeal to his mercy when we
ask for the forgiveness of our sins.

We look to his great power
when we beg him not to lead us into temptation, and we show our faith in his
goodness by our hope that he will deliver us from evil.

The Son of God has always
glorified his Father by his works, and he came into the world to teach men to
give glory to him. He showed men how to praise him by this prayer, which he
taught us with his own lips. It is our duty, therefore, to say it often, with
attention, and in the same spirit as he composed it.

Fourteenth Rose

42. We make as many acts of the noblest Christian virtues as we
pronounce words when we recite this divine prayer attentively.

In saying "Our Father,
who art in heaven," we make acts of faith, adoration and humility. When we
ask that his name be hallowed, we show a burning zeal for his glory. When we
ask for the spread of his kingdom, we make an act of hope; by the wish that his
will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we show a spirit of perfect
obedience. In asking for our daily bread, we practice poverty of spirit and
detachment from worldly goods. When we beg him to forgive us our sins, we make
an act of sorrow for them. By forgiving those who have trespassed against us,
we give proof of the virtue of mercy in its highest degree. Through asking
God's help in all our temptations, we make acts of humility, prudence and
fortitude. As we wait for him to deliver us from evil, we exercise the virtue
of patience.

Finally, while asking for all
these things, not only for ourselves but also for our neighbour and for all
members of the Church, we are carrying out our duty as true children of God, we
are imitating him in his love which embraces all men and we are keeping the
commandment of love of our neighbour.

43. If we mean in our hearts what we say with our lips, and if our
intentions are not at variance with those expressed in the Lord's Prayer, then,
by reciting this prayer, we hate all sin and we observe all of God's laws. For
whenever we think that God is in heaven, that is to say, infinitely removed
from us by the greatness of his majesty, we place ourselves in his presence
filled with overwhelming reverence. Then the fear of the Lord will chase away
all pride and we will bow down before God in utter nothingness.

When we pronounce the name
"Father" and remember that we owe our existence to God, by means of
our parents, and even the instruction we have received by means of our teachers,
who take the place of God and are his living images, we cannot help paying them
honour and respect, or, to be more exact, to honour God in them. And nothing
would be farther from our thoughts than to be disrespectful to them or hurt
them.

When we pray that God's holy
name be glorified, we cannot be farther from profaning it. If we really look
upon the kingdom of God as our heritage, we cannot possibly be attached to the
things of this world.

If we sincerely ask God that
our neighbour may have the same blessings that we ourselves stand in need of,
it goes without saying that we will give up all hatred, quarrelling and
jealousy. And if we ask God for our daily bread, we shall learn to hate
gluttony and sensual pleasures which thrive in rich surroundings.

While sincerely asking God to
forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us, we no longer give way
to anger and revenge, we return good for evil and we love our enemies.

To ask God to save us from
falling into sin when we are tempted is to give proof that we are fighting
laziness and that we are genuinely seeking means to root out vicious habits and
to work out our salvation.

To pray God to deliver us
from evil is to fear his justice, and this will give us true happiness, for the
fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. It is through the virtue of the fear of
God that men avoid sin.

Fifteenth Rose

44. The Angelic Salutation, or Hail Mary, is so heavenly and so beyond
us in its depth of meaning, that Blessed Alan de la Roche held that no mere
creature could ever understand it, and that only our Lord Jesus Christ, born of
the Virgin Mary, can really explain it.

Its enormous value is due,
first of all, to our Lady to whom it was addressed, to the purpose of the
Incarnation of the Word, for which reason this prayer was brought from heaven,
and also to the archangel Gabriel who was the first ever to say it.

The Angelic Salutation is a
most concise summary of all that Catholic theology teaches about the Blessed
Virgin. It is divided into two parts, that of praise and that of petition. The
first shows all that goes to make up Mary's greatness; and the second, all that
we need to ask her for, and all that we may expect to receive through her
goodness.

The most Blessed Trinity
revealed the first part of it to us; St. Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy
Spirit, added the second; and the Church gave us the conclusion in the year 430
when she condemned the Nestorian heresy at the Council of Ephesus and defined
that the Blessed Virgin is truly the Mother of God. At this time she ordered us
to pray to our Lady under this glorious title by saying, "Holy Mary,
Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."

45. The greatest event in the whole history of the world was the
Incarnation of the eternal Word by whom the world was redeemed and peace was
restored between God and men. Our Lady was chosen as his instrument for this
tremendous event, and it was put into effect when she was greeted with the
Angelic Salutation. The archangel Gabriel, one of the leading princes of the
heavenly court, was chosen as ambassador to bear these glad tidings.

In the Angelic Salutation can
be seen the faith and hope of the patriarchs, the prophets and the apostles.
Furthermore, it gives to martyrs their unswerving constancy and strength, it is
the wisdom of the doctors of the Church, the perseverance of the holy
confessors and the life of all religious (Blessed Alan). It is the new hymn of
the law of grace, the joy of angels and men, and the hymn which terrifies devils
and puts them to shame.

By the Angelic Salutation God
became man, a virgin became the Mother of God, the souls of the just were
delivered from Limbo, the empty thrones in heaven have been filled, sin has
been pardoned, grace been given to us, the sick been made well, the dead
brought back to life, exiles brought home, the Blessed Trinity has been
appeased, and men obtained eternal life.

Finally, the Angelic
Salutation is the rainbow in the sky, a sign of the mercy and grace which God
has given to the world (Blessed Alan).

Sixteenth Rose

46. Even though there is nothing so great as the majesty of God and
nothing so low as man in so far as he is a sinner, Almighty God does not
despise our poor prayers. On the contrary, he is pleased when we sing his praises.

And the Angel's greeting to
our Lady is one of the most beautiful hymns which we could possibly sing to the
glory of the Most High. "To you will I sing a new song." This new
hymn, which David foretold would be sung at the coming of the Messiah, is none
other than the Angelic Salutation.

There is an old hymn and a
new hymn: the first is that which the Jews sang out of gratitude to God for
creating them and maintaining them in existence, for delivering them from
captivity and leading them safely through the Red Sea, for giving them manna to
eat, and for all his other blessings.

The new hymn is that which
Christians sing in thanksgiving for the graces of the Incarnation and the
Redemption. As these marvels were brought about by the Angelic Salutation, so
also do we repeat the same salutation to thank the most Blessed Trinity for the
immeasurable goodness shown to us.

We praise God the Father
because he so loved the world that he gave us his only Son as our Saviour. We
bless the Son because he deigned to leave heaven and come down upon earth,
because he was made man and redeemed us. We glorify the Holy Spirit because he
formed our Lord's pure body in the womb of our Lady, that body which was the
victim for our sins. In this spirit of deep thankfulness should we, then,
always say the Hail Mary, making acts of faith, hope, love and thanksgiving for
the priceless gift of salvation.

47. Although this new hymn is in praise of the Mother of God and is
sung directly to her, it is nevertheless most glorious to the Blessed Trinity,
for any honour we pay to our Lady returns inevitably to God, the source of all
her perfections and virtues. God the Father is glorified when we honour the
most perfect of his creatures; God the Son is glorified when we praise his most
pure Mother; the Holy Spirit is glorified when we are lost in admiration at the
graces with which he has filled his spouse.

When we praise and bless our
Lady by saying the Angelic Salutation, she always refers these praises to God
in the same way as she did when she was praised by St. Elizabeth. The latter
blessed her in her high dignity as Mother of God and our Lady immediately
returned these praises to God in her beautiful Magnificat.

48. Just as the Angelic Salutation gave glory to the Blessed Trinity,
it is also the very highest praise that we can give to Mary.

One day, when St. Mechtilde
was praying and was trying to think of some way in which she could express her
love of the Blessed Virgin better than before, she fell into ecstasy. Our Lady
appeared to her with the Angelic Salutation written in letters of gold upon her
breast and said to her, "My daughter, I want you to know that no one can
please me more than by saying the greeting which the most adorable Trinity
presented to me and by which I was raised to the dignity of the Mother of God.

"By the word Ave, which
is the name of Eve, Eva, I learned that God in his infinite power had preserved
me from all sin and its attendant misery which the first woman had been subject
to.

"The name Mary, which
means 'lady of light,' shows that God has filled me with wisdom and light, like
a shining star, to light up heaven and earth.

"The words, full of
grace, remind me that the Holy Spirit has showered so many graces upon me that
I am able to give these graces in abundance to those who ask for them through
my mediation.

"When people say, The
Lord is with thee, they renew the indescribable joy that was mine when the
eternal Word became incarnate in my womb.

"When you say to me,
Blessed art thou among women, I praise the mercy of God who has raised me to
this exalted degree of happiness.

"And at the words,
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, the whole of heaven rejoices with me
to see my Son Jesus adored and glorified for having saved mankind."

Seventeenth Rose

49. Blessed Alan de la Roche, who was so deeply devoted to the Blessed
Virgin, had many revelations from her, and we know that he confirmed the truth
of these revelations by a solemn oath. Three of them stand out with special
emphasis: the first, that if people fail to say the Hail Mary, which has saved
the world, out of carelessness, or because they are lukewarm, or because they
hate it, this is an indication that they will probably be condemned to eternal
punishment.

The second truth is that those
who love this divine salutation bear the very special stamp of predestination.

The third is that those to
whom God has given this favour of loving our Lady and of serving her out of
love must take very great care to continue to love and serve her until the time
when she shall have had them placed in heaven by her Son in the degree of glory
which they have earned (Blessed Alan)

50. Heretics, all of whom are children of the devil and who clearly
bear the sign of God's reprobation, have a horror of the Hail Mary. They still
say the Our Father, but never the Hail Mary; they would rather carry a
poisonous snake about them than a rosary.

Among Catholics, those who
bear the mark of God's reprobation think but little of the Rosary. They either
neglect to say it or only say it quickly and in a lukewarm manner.

Even if I did not believe
what was revealed to Blessed Alan de la Roche, even then my own experience
would be enough to convince me of this terrible but consoling truth. I do not
know, nor do I see clearly, how it can be that a devotion which seems to be so
small can be the infallible sign of eternal salvation, and how its absence can
be the sign of God's eternal displeasure; nevertheless, nothing could be more
true.

In our own day we see that
people who hold new doctrines that have been condemned by the Church, with all
their would-be piety, ignore the devotion to the Rosary and often dissuade
their acquaintances from saying it with all sorts of fine pretexts. They are
very careful not to condemn the Rosary and the Scapular, as the Calvinists do,
but the way they set about attacking them is all the more deadly because it is
the more cunning. I shall refer to it again later on.

51. The Hail Mary, the Rosary, is the prayer and the infallible
touchstone by which I can tell those who are led by the Spirit of God from
those who are deceived by the devil. I have known souls who seemed to soar like
eagles to the heights by their sublime contemplation and yet were pitifully led
astray by the devil. I only found out how wrong they were when I learned that
they scorned the Hail Mary and the Rosary, which they considered as being far
beneath them.

The Hail Mary is a blessed
dew that falls from heaven upon the souls of the predestinate. It gives them a
marvellous spiritual fertility so that they can grow in all virtues. The more
the garden of the soul is watered by this prayer, the more enlightened in mind
we become, the more zealous in heart, the stronger against all our enemies.

The Hail Mary is a sharp and
flaming shaft which, joined to the Word of God, gives the preacher the strength
to pierce, move, and convert the most hardened hearts, even if he has little or
no natural gift for preaching.

As I have already said, this
was the great secret that our Lady taught St. Dominic and Blessed Alan for the
conversion of heretics and sinners. Saint Antoninus tells us that that is why
many priests acquired the habit of saying a Hail Mary at the beginning of their
sermons.

Eighteenth Rose

52. This heavenly salutation draws down upon us the blessings of Jesus
and Mary in abundance, for it is an infallible truth that Jesus and Mary reward
in a marvellous way those who glorify them. "I love those who love me. I
enrich them and fill their treasures." That is what Jesus and Mary say to
us. "Those who sow blessings will also reap blessings."

Now if we say the Hail Mary
properly, is not that a way to love, bless and glorify Jesus and Mary? In each
Hail Mary we bless both Jesus and Mary: "Blessed art thou among women, and
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus."

By each Hail Mary we give our
Lady the same honour that God gave her when he sent the archangel Gabriel to
greet her for him. How could anyone possibly think that Jesus and Mary, who
often do good to those who curse them, could ever curse those who bless and
honour them by the Hail Mary?

Both Saint Bernard and Saint
Bonaventure say that the Queen of Heaven is certainly no less grateful and good
than gracious and well-mannered people of this world. Just as she excels in all
other perfections, she surpasses us all in the virtue of gratitude; so she will
never let us honour her with respect without repaying us a hundredfold. Saint
Bonaventure says that Mary will greet us with grace if we greet her with the
Hail Mary.

Who could possibly understand
the graces and blessings which the greeting and tender regard of the Virgin
Mary effect in us? From the very first instant that Saint Elizabeth heard the
greeting given her by the Mother of God, she was filled with the Holy Spirit
and the child in her womb leaped for joy. If we make ourselves worthy of the
greeting and blessing of our Lady, we shall certainly be filled with graces and
a flood of spiritual consolations will flow into our souls.

Nineteenth Rose

53. It is written, "Give, and it shall be given to you." To
take Blessed Alan's illustration of this: "Supposing I were to give you a
hundred and fifty diamonds every day, even if you were an enemy of mine, would
you not forgive me? Would you not treat me as a friend and give me all the
graces that you were able to give? If you want to gain the riches of grace and
of glory, salute the Blessed Virgin, honour your good Mother."

"He who honours his
Mother (the Blessed Virgin) is as one who lays up a treasure." Present her
every day with at least fifty Hail Marys, for each one is worth fifteen
precious stones, which are more pleasing to her than all the riches of this
world put together.

And you can then expect great
things from her generosity. She is our Mother and our friend. She is the
empress of the universe and loves us more than all the mothers and queens of
the world have ever loved any one human being, for, as St. Augustine says, the
charity of the Blessed Virgin far surpasses the natural love of all mankind and
even of all the angels.

54. One day Saint Gertrude had a vision of our Lord counting gold
coins. She summoned the courage to ask him what he was doing, and he answered,
"I am counting the Hail Marys that you have said; this is the money with
which you purchase heaven."

The holy and learned Jesuit,
Father Suarez, was so deeply aware of the value of the Angelic Salutation that
he said he would gladly give all his learning for the price of one Hail Mary
well said.

55. Blessed Alan de la Roche said, "Let everyone who loves you, O
most holy Mary, listen to this and drink it in:

"Whenever I say Hail,
Mary, the court of heaven rejoices and earth is lost in wonderment; I despise
the world and my heart is filled with the love of God, when I say 'Hail, Mary.'
All my fears wilt and die and my passions are quelled, if I say 'Hail, Mary';
devotion grows within me and sorrow for sin awakens, when I say 'Hail, Mary.'

"Hope is made strong in
my breast and the dew of consolation falls on my soul more and more, because I
say, 'Hail, Mary.' And my spirit rejoices and sorrow fades away, when I say
'Hail, Mary.'

"For the sweetness of
this blessed salutation is so great that there are no words to explain it
adequately, and even when its wonders have been sung, we still find it so full
of mystery and so profound that its depths can never be plumbed. It has but few
words but is exceeding rich in mystery; it is sweeter than honey and more
precious than gold. We should often meditate on it in our hearts, and have it
ever on our lips so as to say it devoutly again and again."

Blessed Alan also relates
that a nun who had always had a great devotion to the Rosary appeared after her
death to one of her sisters in religion and said to her, "If I were able
to return in my body to have the chance of saying just a single Hail Mary, even
without great fervour, I would gladly go through the sufferings that I had
during my last illness all over again, in order to gain the merit of this
prayer" It is to be noted that she had been bedridden and suffered agonizing
pains for several years before she died.

56. Michel de Lisle, Bishop of Salubre, who was a disciple and
co-worker of Blessed Alan de la Roche in the re-establishment of the holy
Rosary, said that the Angelic Salutation is the remedy for all ills that we
suffer as long as we say it devoutly in honour of our Lady.

Twentieth Rose: Brief explanation of the
Hail Mary

57. Are you in the miserable state of sin? Then call on Mary and say
to her, "Ave," which means "I greet thee with the most profound
respect, thou who art without sin," and she will deliver you from the evil
of your sins.

Are you groping in the
darkness of ignorance and error? Go to Mary and say to her, "Hail
Mary," which means "Hail, thou who art bathed in the light of the Sun
of Justice," and she will give you a share in her light.

Have you strayed from the
path leading to heaven? Then call on Mary, for her name means "Star of the
Sea, the Polar Star which guides the ships of our souls during the voyage of
this life," and she will guide you to the harbour of eternal salvation.

Are you in sorrow? Turn to
Mary, for her name means also "Sea of Bitterness which has been filled
with bitterness in this world but which is now turned into a sea of purest joy
in heaven," and she will turn your sorrow into joy and your affliction
into consolation.

Have you lost the state of
grace? Praise and honour the numberless graces with which God has filled the
Blessed Virgin and say to her, Thou art full of grace and filled with all the
gifts of the Holy Spirit, and she will give you some of these graces.

Are you alone, having lost
God's protection? Pray to Mary and say, The Lord is with thee, in a nobler and
more intimate way than he is with the saints and the just, because thou art one
with him. He is thy Son and his flesh is thy flesh; thou art united to the Lord
because of thy perfect likeness to him and by your mutual love, for thou art
his Mother. And then say to her, "The three persons of the Godhead are
with thee because thou art the Temple of the Blessed Trinity," and she
will place you once more under the protection and care of God.

Have you become an outcast
and been accursed by God? Then say to our Lady, "Blessed art thou above
all women and above all nations by thy purity and fertility; thou hast turned
God's maledictions into blessings for us." She will bless you.

Do you hunger for the bread
of grace and the bread of life? Draw near to her who bore the living Bread
which came down from heaven, and say to her, "Blessed be the fruit of thy
womb, whom thou hast conceived without the slightest loss to thy virginity,
whom thou didst carry without discomfort and brought forth without pain.
Blessed be Jesus who redeemed our suffering world when we were in the bondage
of sin, who has healed the world of its sickness, who has raised the dead to
life, brought home the banished, restored sinners to grace, and saved men from
damnation. Without doubt, your soul will be filled with the bread of grace in
this life and of eternal glory in the next. Amen."

58. Conclude your prayer with the Church and say, "Holy
Mary," holy because of thy incomparable and eternal devotion to the
service of God, holy in thy great rank as Mother of God, who has endowed thee
with eminent holiness, in keeping with this great dignity.

"Mother of God, and our
Mother, our Advocate and Mediatrix, Treasurer and dispenser of God's graces,
obtain for us the prompt forgiveness of our sins and grant that we may be
reconciled with the divine majesty.

"Pray for us sinners,
thou who art always filled with compassion for those in need, who never despise
sinners or turn them away, for without them you would never have been Mother of
the Redeemer.

"Pray for us now, during
this short life, so fraught with sorrow and uncertainty; now, because we can be
sure of nothing except the present moment; now that we are surrounded and
attacked night and day by powerful and ruthless enemies.

"And at the hour of our
death, so terrible and full of danger, when our strength is waning and our
spirits are sinking, and our souls and bodies are worn out with fear and pain;
at the hour of our death when the devil is working with might and main to
ensnare us and cast us into perdition; at that hour when our lot will be
decided forever and ever, heaven or hell.

"Come to the help of
your poor children, gentle Mother of pity, Advocate and Refuge of sinners, at
the hour of our death drive far from us our bitter enemies, the devils, our
accusers, whose frightful presence fills us with dread. Light our path through
the valley of the shadow of death. Lead us to thy Son's judgment-seat and
remain at our side. Intercede for us and ask thy Son to pardon us and receive
us into the ranks of thy elect in the realms of everlasting glory. Amen."

59. No one could help admiring the excellence of the holy Rosary, made
up as it is of these two divine parts: the Lord's Prayer and the Angelic
Salutation. How could there be any prayers more pleasing to God and to the
Blessed Virgin, or any that are easier, more precious, or more helpful than
these two prayers? We should always have them in our hearts and on our lips to
honour the most Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ our Saviour and his most holy
Mother.

In addition, at the end of
each decade it is good to add the Gloria Patri, that is: Glory be to the
Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

THIRD DECADE
The surpassing merit of the holy Rosary as a meditation on the life and passion
of our Lord Jesus Christ

Twenty-first Rose: The Fifteen Mysteries of
the Rosary

60. A mystery is a sacred thing which is difficult to understand. The
works of our Lord Jesus Christ are all sacred and divine because he is God and
man at one and the same time. The works of the Blessed Virgin are very holy
because she is the most perfect and the most pure of God's creatures. The works
of our Lord and of his blessed Mother can rightly be called mysteries because
they are so full of wonders, of all kinds of perfections, and of deep and
sublime truths, which the Holy Spirit reveals to the humble and simple souls
who honour these mysteries.

The works of Jesus and Mary
can also be called wonderful flowers, but their fragrance and beauty can only
be appreciated by those who approach them, who breathe in their fragrance, and
who discover their beauty by diligent and serious meditation.

61. St. Dominic divided the lives of our Lord and our Lady into
fifteen mysteries, which stand for their virtues and their most important
actions. These are fifteen pictures whose every detail must rule and inspire
our lives. They are fifteen flaming torches to guide our steps throughout this
earthly life; fifteen shining mirrors to help us to know Jesus and Mary, to
know ourselves and to light the fire of their love in our hearts; fifteen fiery
furnaces to consume us completely in their heavenly flames.

Our Lady taught Saint Dominic
this excellent method of praying and ordered him to preach it far and wide so
as to reawaken the fervour of Christians and to revive in their hearts a love
for our Blessed Lord. She also taught it to Blessed Alan de la Roche and said
to him in a vision, "When people say 150 Hail Marys, that prayer is very
helpful to them and a most pleasing tribute to me. But they will do better still
and will please me more if they say these salutations while meditating on the
life, death, and passion of Jesus Christ, for this meditation is the soul of
this prayer." For the Rosary said without the meditation on the sacred
mysteries of our salvation would almost be a body without a soul, excellent
matter, but without the form, which is the meditation, and which distinguishes
it from other devotions.

62. The first part of the Rosary contains five mysteries: the first,
the Annunciation of the archangel Gabriel to our Lady; the second the
Visitation of our Lady to Saint Elizabeth; the third, the Nativity of Jesus
Christ; the fourth, the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple and the
purification of the Blessed Virgin; the fifth, the Finding of Jesus in the
Temple among the doctors.

These are called the Joyful
Mysteries because of the joy which they gave to the whole universe. Our Lady
and the angels were overwhelmed with joy the moment the Son of God became
incarnate. Saint Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist were filled with joy by the
visit of Jesus and Mary. Heaven and earth rejoiced at the birth of the Saviour.
Holy Simeon felt great consolation and was filled with joy when he took the
holy child into his arms. The doctors were lost in admiration and wonderment at
the replies which Jesus gave; and who could express the joy of Mary and Joseph
when they found Jesus after three days' absence?

63. The second part of the Rosary is also composed of five mysteries,
which are called the Sorrowful Mysteries because they show us our Lord weighed
down with sadness, covered with wounds, laden with insults, sufferings and
torments.

The first of these mysteries
is our Lord's prayer and his Agony in the Garden of Olives; the second, his
Scourging; the third, his being Crowned with thorns; the fourth, his Carrying
of the Cross; the fifth, his Crucifixion and death on Calvary.

64. The third part of the Rosary contains five more mysteries, which
are called the Glorious Mysteries, because when we say them we meditate on Jesus
and Mary in their triumph and glory. The first is the Resurrection of Jesus;
the second, his Ascension into heaven; the third, the Descent of the Holy
Spirit upon the apostles; the fourth, our Lady's Assumption in glory; the
fifth, her Coronation.

Such are the fifteen fragrant
flowers of the mystical Rose- tree, on which devout souls linger, like
discerning bees, to gather their nectar and make the honey of a solid devotion.

Twenty-second Rose: The Meditation of the
Mysteries makes us resemble Jesus

65. The chief concern of the Christian should be to tend to
perfection. "Be faithful imitators of God, as his well-beloved
children," the great Apostle tells us. This obligation is included in the
eternal decree of our predestination, as the one and only means prescribed by
God to attain everlasting glory.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa makes
a delightful comparison when he says that we are all artists and that our souls
are blank canvasses which we have to fill in. The colours which we use are the
Christian virtues, and the original which we have to copy is Jesus Christ, the
perfect living image of God the Father. Just as a painter who wants to do a
life-like portrait places the model before his eyes and looks at it before
making each stroke, so the Christian must always have before his eyes the life
and virtues of Jesus Christ, so as never to say, think or do anything which is
not in conformity with his model.

66. It was because our Lady wanted to help us in the great task of
working out our salvation that she ordered Saint Dominic to teach the faithful
to meditate upon the sacred mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ. She did
this, not only that they might adore and glorify him, but chiefly that they
might pattern their lives and actions on his virtues.

Children copy their parents
through watching them and talking to them, and they learn their own language
through hearing them speak. An apprentice learns his trade through watching his
master at work; in the same way the faithful members of the Confraternity of the
Holy Rosary can become like their divine Master if they reverently study and
imitate the virtues of Jesus which are shown in the fifteen mysteries of his
life. They can do this with the help of his grace and through the intercession
of his blessed Mother.

67. Long ago, Moses was inspired by God to command the Jewish people
never to forget the graces which had been showered upon them. The Son of God
has all the more reason to command us to engrave the mysteries of his life,
passion and glory upon our hearts and to have them always before our eyes,
since each mystery reminds us of his goodness to us in some special way and it
is by these mysteries that he has shown us his overwhelming love and desire for
our salvation. "Oh, all you who pass by, pause a while," he says,
"and see if there has ever been any sorrow like to the sorrow I have
endured for love of you. Be mindful of my poverty and humiliations; think of
the gall and wormwood I took for you in my bitter passion."

These words and many others
which could be given here should be more than enough to convince us that we
must not only say the Rosary with our lips in honour of Jesus and Mary, but
also meditate upon the sacred mysteries while we are saying it.

Twenty-third Rose: The Rosary is a Memorial
of the Life and Death of Jesus

68. Jesus Christ, the divine spouse of our souls and our very dear
friend, wishes us to remember his goodness to us and to prize his gifts above
all else. Whenever we meditate devoutly and lovingly upon the sacred mysteries
of the Rosary, he receives an added joy, as also do our Lady and all the saints
in heaven. His gifts are the most outstanding results of his love for us and
the richest presents he could possibly give us, and it is by virtue of such
presents that the Blessed Virgin herself and all the saints are glorified in
heaven.

One day Blessed Angela of
Foligno begged our Lord to let her know by which religious exercise she could
honour him best. He appeared to her nailed to his cross and said, "My
daughter, look at my wounds." She then realized that nothing pleases our
dear Lord more than meditating upon his sufferings. Then he showed her the
wounds on his head and revealed still other sufferings and said to her, "I
have suffered all this for your salvation. What can you ever do to return my
love for you?"

69. The holy sacrifice of the Mass gives infinite honour to the most
Blessed Trinity because it represents the passion of Jesus Christ and because
through the Mass we offer to God the merits of our Lord's obedience, of his
sufferings, and of his precious blood. All the heavenly court also receive an
added joy from the Mass. Several doctors of the Church, including St. Thomas,
tell us that, for the same reason, all the blessed in heaven rejoice in the
communion of the faithful because the Blessed Sacrament is a memorial of the
passion and death of Jesus Christ, and that by means of it men share in its
fruits and work out their salvation.

Now the holy Rosary, recited
with the meditation on the sacred mysteries, is a sacrifice of praise to God
for the great gift of our redemption and a holy reminder of the sufferings,
death and glory of Jesus Christ. It is therefore true that the Rosary gives
glory and added joy to our Lord, our Lady and all the blessed, because they
cannot desire anything greater, for the sake of our eternal happiness, than to
see us engaged in a practice which is so glorious for our Lord and so salutary
for ourselves.

70. The Gospel teaches us that a sinner who is converted and who does
penance gives joy to all the angels. If the repentance and conversion of one
sinner is enough to make the angels rejoice, how great must be the happiness
and jubilation of the whole heavenly court and what glory for our Blessed Lord
himself to see us here on earth meditating devoutly and lovingly on his
humiliations and torments and on his cruel and shameful death! Is there
anything that could touch our hearts more surely and bring us to sincere
repentance?

A Christian who does not
meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary is very ungrateful to our Lord and
shows how little he cares for all that our divine Saviour has suffered to save
the world. This attitude seems to show that he knows little or nothing of the
life of Jesus Christ, and that he has never taken the trouble to find out what
he has done and what he went through in order to save us. A Christian of that
kind ought to fear that, not having known Jesus Christ or having put him out of
his mind, Jesus will reject him on the day of judgment with the reproach,
"I tell you solemnly, I do not know you."

Let us meditate, then, on the
life and sufferings of our Saviour by means of the holy Rosary; let us learn to
know him well and to be grateful for all his blessings, so that, on the day of
Judgment, he may number us among his children and his friends.

Twenty-fourth Rose: Meditation on the
Mysteries of the Rosary is a great means of perfection

71. The saints made our Lord's life the principal object of their
study; they meditated on his virtues and his sufferings, and in this way
arrived at Christian perfection.

Saint Bernard began with this
meditation and he always kept it up. "At the very beginning of my
conversion," he said, "I made a bouquet of myrrh fashioned from the
sorrows of my Saviour. I placed this bouquet upon my heart, thinking of the
lashes, the thorns and the nails of his passion. I applied my whole mind to the
meditation on these mysteries every day."

This was also the practice of
the holy martyrs; we admire how they triumphed over the most cruel sufferings.
Where could this admirable constancy of the martyrs come from, says Saint
Bernard, if not from the wounds of Jesus Christ, on which they meditated so
frequently? Where was the soul of these generous athletes when their blood
gushed forth and their bodies were wracked with cruel torments? Their soul was
in the wounds of Christ and those wounds made them invincible."

72. During her whole life, our Saviour's holy Mother was occupied in
meditating on the virtues and the sufferings of her Son. When she heard the angels
sing their hymn of joy at his birth and saw the shepherds adore him in the
stable, her heart was filled with wonder and she meditated on all these
marvels. She compared the greatness of the Word incarnate to the way he humbled
himself in this lowly fashion; the straw of the crib, to his throne in the
heart of his Father; the might of God, to the weakness of a child; his wisdom,
to his simplicity.

Our Lady said to Saint
Bridget one day, "Whenever I used to contemplate the beauty, modesty, and
wisdom of my Son, my heart was filled with joy; and whenever I considered his
hands and feet which would be pierced with cruel nails, I wept bitterly and my
heart was rent with sorrow and pain."

73. After our Lord's Ascension, our Blessed Lady spent the rest of her
life visiting the places that had been hallowed by his presence and by his
sufferings. There, she meditated on his boundless love and on his terrible
passion.

Saint Mary Magdalene
continually performed the same religious exercises during the last thirty years
of her life, when she lived at Sainte-Baume.

Saint Jerome tells us that
this was the devotion of the faithful in the early centuries of the Church.
From all the countries of the world they came to the Holy Land to engrave more
deeply on their hearts a great love and remembrance of the Saviour of mankind
by seeing the places and things he had made holy by his birth, his work, his
sufferings, and his death.

74. All Christians have but one faith and adore one and the same God,
and hope for the same happiness in heaven; they know only one mediator, who is
Jesus Christ; all must imitate their divine model, and in order to do this they
must meditate on the mysteries of his life, of his virtues and of his glory.

It is a great mistake to
think that only priests and religious and those who have withdrawn from the
turmoil of the world are supposed to meditate upon the truths of our faith and
the mysteries of the life of Christ. If priests and religious have an
obligation to meditate on the great truths of our holy religion in order to
live up to their vocation worthily, the same obligation is just as much
incumbent on the laity, because of the fact that every day they meet with
spiritual dangers which might cause them to lose their souls. Therefore they should
arm themselves with the frequent meditation on the life, virtues, and
sufferings of our Blessed Lord, which are presented to us in the fifteen
mysteries of the holy Rosary.

Twenty-fifth Rose: The Riches of Holiness
contained in the Prayers and Meditations of the Rosary

75. Never will anyone be able to understand the marvellous riches of
sanctification which are contained in the prayers and mysteries of the holy
Rosary. This meditation on the mysteries of the life and death of our Lord
Jesus Christ is the source of the most wonderful fruits for those who make use
of it.

Today people want things that
strike and move them, that leave deep impressions on the soul. Now has there
ever been anything in the history of the world more moving than the wonderful
story of the life, death, and glory of our Saviour which is contained in the
holy Rosary? In the fifteen tableaux, the principal scenes or mysteries of his
life unfold before our eyes. How could there be any prayers more wonderful and
sublime than the Lord's Prayer and the Ave of the angel? All our desires and
all our needs are found expressed in these two prayers.

76. The meditation on the mysteries and prayers of the Rosary is the
easiest of all prayers, because the diversity of the virtues of our Lord and
the different situations of his life which we study, refresh and fortify our
mind in a wonderful way and help us to avoid distractions. For the learned,
these mysteries are the source of the most profound doctrine, while simple
people find in them a means of instruction well within their reach.

We need to learn this easy
form of meditation before progressing to the highest state of contemplation.
That is the view of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the advice that he gives when he
says that, first of all, one must practice on a battlefield, as it were, by
acquiring all the virtues of which we have the perfect model in the mysteries
of the Rosary; for, says the learned Cajetan, that is the way we arrive at a
really intimate union with God, since without that union contemplation is
nothing but an illusion which can lead souls astray.

77. If only the Illuminists or the Quietists of these days had
followed this piece of advice, they would never have fallen so low or caused
such scandals among spiritual people. To think that it is possible to say
prayers that are finer and more beautiful than the Our Father and the Hail Mary
is to fall a prey to a strange illusion of the devil, for these heavenly
prayers are the support, the strength and the safeguard of our souls.

I admit it is not always
necessary to say them as vocal prayers and that interior prayer is, in a sense,
more perfect than vocal. But believe me, it is really dangerous, not to say
fatal, to give up saying the Rosary of your own accord under the pretext of seeking
a more perfect union with God. Sometimes a soul that is proud in a subtle way
and who may have done everything that he can do interiorly to rise to the
sublime heights of contemplation that the saints have reached may be deluded by
the noonday devil into giving up his former devotions which are good enough for
ordinary souls. He turns a deaf ear to the prayers and the greeting of an angel
and even to the prayer which God has composed, put into practice, and
commanded: Thus shall you pray: Our Father. Having reached this point, such a
soul drifts from illusion to illusion, and falls from precipice to precipice.

78. Believe me, dear brother of the Rosary Confraternity, if you
genuinely wish to attain a high degree of prayer in all honesty and without falling
into the illusions of the devil so common with those who practice mental
prayer, say the whole Rosary every day, or at least five decades of it.

If you have already attained,
by the grace of God, a high degree of prayer, keep up the practice of saying
the holy Rosary if you wish to remain in that state and by it to grow in
humility. For never will anyone who says his Rosary every day become a formal
heretic or be led astray by the devil. This is a statement which I would sign
with my blood.

On the other hand, if God in
his infinite mercy draws you to himself as forcibly as he did some of the
saints while saying the Rosary, make yourself passive in his hands and let
yourself be drawn towards him. Let God work and pray in you and let him say
your Rosary in his way, and that will be sufficient for the day.

But if you are still in the
state of active contemplation or the ordinary prayer of quietude, of the
presence of God, affective prayer, you have even less reason for giving up the
Rosary. Far from making you lose ground in mental prayer or stunting your
spiritual growth, it will be a wonderful help to you. You will find it a real
Jacob's ladder with fifteen rungs by which you will go from virtue to virtue
and from light to light. Thus, without danger of being misled, you will easily
arrive at the fullness of the age of Jesus Christ.

Twenty-sixth Rose

79. Whatever you do, do not be like a certain pious but self- willed
lady in Rome, so often referred to by speakers on the Rosary. She was so devout
and fervent that she put to shame by her holy life even the strictest religious
in the Church.

Having decided to ask St.
Dominic's advice about her spiritual life, she made her confession to him. For
penance he gave her one Rosary to say and advised her to say it every day. She
excused herself, saying that she had her regular exercises, that she made the
Stations of Rome every day, that she wore sack- cloth as well as a hair-shirt,
that she gave herself the discipline several times a week, that she often fasted
and did other penances. Saint Dominic urged her over and over again to take his
advice and say the Rosary, but she would not hear of it. She left the
confessional, horrified at the methods of this new spiritual director who had
tried so hard to persuade her to take up a devotion for which she had no taste.

Later on, when she was at
prayer she fell into ecstasy and had a vision of her soul appearing before the
Supreme Judge. Saint Michael put all her penances and other prayers on one side
of the scales and all her sins and imperfections on the other. The tray of her
good works were greatly outweighed by that of her sins and imperfections.

Filled with alarm, she cried
for mercy, imploring the help of the Blessed Virgin, her gracious advocate, who
took the one and only Rosary she had said for her penance and dropped it on the
tray of her good works. This one Rosary was so heavy that it weighed more than
all her sins as well as all her good works. Our Lady then reproved her for
having refused to follow the counsel of her servant Dominic and for not saying
the Rosary every day.

As soon as she came to
herself she rushed and threw herself at the feet of Saint Dominic and told him
all that had happened, begged his forgiveness for her unbelief, and promised to
say the Rosary faithfully every day. By this means she rose to Christian
perfection and finally to the glory of everlasting life.

You who are people of prayer,
learn from this the power, the value and the importance of this devotion of the
holy Rosary when it is said with meditation on the mysteries.

80. Few saints have reached the same heights of prayer as Saint Mary
Magdalene, who was lifted up to heaven by angels each day, and who had the
privilege of learning at the feet of Jesus and his holy Mother. Yet one day,
when she asked God to show her a sure way of advancing in his love and arriving
at the heights of perfection, he sent the archangel St. Michael to tell her, on
his behalf, that there was no other way for her to reach perfection than to
meditate on our Lord's passion. So he placed a cross in the front of her cave
and told her to pray before it, contemplating the sorrowful mysteries which she
had seen take place with her own eyes.

The example of Saint Francis
de Sales, the great spiritual director of his time, should spur you on to join
the holy confraternity of the Rosary, since, great saint though he was, he
bound himself by vow to say the whole Rosary every day for as long as he lived.

Saint Charles Borromeo also
said it every day and strongly recommended this devotion to his priests and
clerics in seminaries and to all his people.

Blessed Pius V, one of the
greatest popes who have ever ruled the Church, used to say the Rosary every
day. Saint Thomas of Villanova, Archbishop of Valencia, Saint Ignatius, Saint
Francis Xavier, Saint Francis Borgia, Saint Teresa and Saint Philip Neri, as
well as many other great men whom I do not mention, were greatly devoted to the
Rosary.

Follow their example; your
spiritual directors will be very pleased, and if they are aware of the benefits
which you can derive from this devotion, they will be the first to urge you to
adopt it.

Twenty-seventh Rose

81. To encourage you still more in this devotion practised by so many
holy people, I should like to add that the Rosary recited with the meditation
of the mysteries brings about the following marvellous results:

1. it gradually brings us a
perfect knowledge of Jesus Christ;

2. it purifies our souls from
sin;

3 it gives us victory over
all our enemies;

4. it makes the practice of
virtue easy;

5 it sets us on fire with the
love of our Lord;

6. it enriches us with graces
and merits;

7 it supplies us with what is
needed to pay all our debts to God and to our fellow-men, and finally, it
obtains all kinds of graces from God.

82. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is the science of Christians and the
science of salvation; it surpasses, says Saint Paul, all human sciences in
value and perfection:

1. because of the dignity of
its object, which is a God-man, compared to whom the whole universe is but a
drop of dew or a grain of sand;

2. because of its utility to
us; human sciences only fill us with the wind and emptiness of pride;

3. because of its necessity;
for no one can be saved without the knowledge of Jesus Christ, while a person
who knows absolutely nothing of any other science will be saved as long as he
is enlightened by the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Blessed is the Rosary which
gives us this science and knowledge of our Blessed Lord through our meditations
on his life, death, passion and glory.

The Queen of Sheba, lost in
admiration at Solomon's wisdom, cried out, "Blessed are your attendants
and your servants who are always in your presence and hear your wisdom."
But happier still are the faithful who carefully meditate on the life, virtues,
sufferings and glory of our Saviour, because by this means they can gain
perfect knowledge of him, in which eternal life consists.

83. Our Lady revealed to Blessed Alan that no sooner had Saint Dominic
begun preaching the Rosary than hardened sinners were touched and wept bitterly
over their grievous sins. Young children performed unbelievable penances, and
everywhere he preached the Rosary such fervour was aroused that sinners changed
their lives and edified everyone by their penances and the amendment of their
lives.

If by chance your conscience
is burdened with sin, take your Rosary and say at least a part of it in honour
of some of the mysteries of the life, passion, and glory of Jesus Christ, and
you can be sure that, while you are meditating on these mysteries and honouring
them, he will show his sacred wounds to his Father in heaven. He will plead for
you and obtain for you contrition and the forgiveness of your sins. One day our
Lord said to Blessed Alan, "If only these poor wretched sinners would say
my Rosary often, they would share in the merits of my passion, and I would be
their Advocate and would appease the justice of God."

84. This life is a continual war and a series of temptations; we do
not have to contend with enemies of flesh and blood, but with the very powers
of hell. What better weapon could we possibly use to combat them than the
prayer which our great Leader has taught us, than the Angelic Salutation which
has put the devils to flight, destroyed sin and renewed the world? What better
weapon could we use than meditation on the life and passion of Jesus Christ?
For, as Saint Peter tells us, it is with this thought that we must arm
ourselves, in order to defend ourselves against the very same enemies whom he
has conquered and who molest us every day.

"Ever since the devil
was crushed by the humility and the passion of Jesus Christ," says
Cardinal Hugues, "he has been practically unable to attack a soul that is
armed with meditation on the mysteries of our Lord's life, and, if he does
trouble such a soul, he is sure to be shamefully defeated." "Put on
the armour of God so as to be able to resist the attacks of the devil."

85. So arm yourself with the arms of God, with the holy Rosary, and
you will crush the devil's head and stand firm in the face of all his
temptations. That is why even a pair of rosary beads is so terrible to the
devil, and why the saints have used them to fetter him and drive him from the
bodies of those who were possessed. Such happenings have been recorded more
than once.

86. Blessed Alan relates that a man he knew had tried desperately all
kinds of devotions to rid himself of the evil spirit which possessed him, but
without success. Finally, he thought of wearing his rosary round his neck,
which eased him considerably. He discovered that whenever he took it off the
devil tormented him cruelly, so he resolved to wear it night and day. This
drove the evil spirit away forever because he could not bear such a terrible
chain. Blessed Alan also testifies that he delivered a great number of those
who were possessed by putting a rosary round their necks.

87. Father Jean Amât, of the Order of St. Dominic, was giving a series
of Lenten sermons in the Kingdom of Aragon one year, when a young girl was
brought to him who was possessed by the devil. After he had exorcised her
several times without success, he put his rosary round her neck. Hardly had he
done so when the girl began to scream and cry out in a fearful way, shrieking,
"Take it off, take it off; these beads are tormenting me." At last,
the priest, filled with pity for the girl, took his rosary off her.

The very next night, when Fr.
Amât was in bed, the same devils who had possession of the girl came to him,
foaming with rage and tried to seize him. But he had his rosary clasped in his
hand and no efforts of theirs could wrench it from him. He beat them with it
very well indeed and put them to flight, crying out, "Holy Mary, Our Lady
of the Rosary, come to my help."

The next day on his way to the
church, he met the poor girl, still possessed; one of the devils within her
started to jeer at him, saying, "Well, brother, if you had been without
your rosary, we should have made short shrift of you." Then the good
Father threw his rosary round the girl's neck without more ado, saying,
"By the sacred names of Jesus and Mary his holy Mother, and by the power
of the holy Rosary, I command you, evil spirits, to leave the body of this girl
at once." They were immediately forced to obey him, and she was delivered
from them.

These stories show the power
of the holy Rosary in overcoming all sorts of temptations from the evil spirits
and all sorts of sins, because these blessed beads of the Rosary put devils to
rout.

Twenty-eighth Rose

88. St. Augustine assures us that there is no spiritual exercise more
fruitful or more useful than the frequent reflection on the sufferings of our
Lord. Blessed Albert the Great, who had St. Thomas Aquinas as his student,
learned in a revelation that by simply thinking of or meditating on the passion
of Jesus Christ, a Christian gains more merit than if he had fasted on bread
and water every Friday for a year, or had beaten himself with the discipline
once a week till blood flowed, or had recited the whole Book of Psalms every day.
If this is so, then how great must be the merit we can gain from the Rosary,
which commemorates the whole life and passion of our Lord?

Our Lady one day revealed to
Blessed Alan de la Roche that, after the holy sacrifice of the Mass, which is
the first and most living memorial of our Lord's passion, there was indeed no
more excellent devotion or one of greater merit than that of the Rosary, which
is like a second memorial and representation of the life and passion of Jesus
Christ.

89. Fr. Dorland relates that in 1481 our Lady appeared to the
Venerable Dominic, a Carthusian devoted to the holy Rosary, who lived at
Treves, and said to him:

"Whenever one of the
faithful, in a state of grace, says the Rosary while meditating on the
mysteries of the life and passion of Christ, he obtains full and entire
remission of all his sins."

She also said to Blessed
Alan, "I want you to know that, although there are numerous indulgences
already attached to the recitation of my Rosary, I shall add many more to every
five decades for those who, free from serious sin, say them with devotion, on
their knees. And whosoever shall persevere in the devotion of the holy Rosary,
with its prayers and meditations, shall be rewarded for it; I shall obtain for
him full remission of the penalty and the guilt of all his sins at the end of
his life.

"And let this not seem
incredible to you; it is easy for me because I am the Mother of the King of
heaven, and he calls me full of grace. And being filled with grace, I am able
to dispense it freely to my dear children."

90. St. Dominic was so convinced of the efficacy of the Rosary and its
great value that, when he heard confessions, he hardly ever gave any other
penance, as we have seen in the story I told you of the lady in Rome to whom he
gave only a single Rosary. St. Dominic was a great saint and other confessors
also ought to walk in his footsteps by asking their penitents to say the Rosary
with meditation on the sacred mysteries, rather than giving them other penances
which are less meritorious and less pleasing to God, less likely to help them
to advance in virtue, and not as efficacious in helping them to avoid sin.
Moreover, while saying the Rosary, people gain numerous indulgences which are
not attached to many other devotions.

91. As Abbot Blosius says, "The Rosary, with meditation on the
life and passion of Christ, is certainly most pleasing to our Lord and his
blessed Mother and is a very successful means of obtaining all graces; we can
say it for ourselves as well as for those who have been recommended to our
prayers and for the whole Church. Let us turn, then, to the holy Rosary in all
our needs, and we shall infallibly obtain the graces we ask for from God to
attain our salvation.

Twenty-ninth Rose

92. There is nothing more divine, according to the mind of St. Denis,
nothing more noble or agreeable to God than to cooperate in the work of saving
souls and to frustrate the devil's plans for ruining them. The Son of God came
down to earth for no other reason than to save us. He upset Satan's empire by
founding the Church, but the devil rallied his strength and wreaked cruel
violence on souls by the Albigensian heresy, by the hatred, dissensions and
abominable vices which he spread throughout the world in the eleventh century.

Only severe remedies could
possibly cure such terrible disorders and repel Satan's forces. The Blessed
Virgin, protectress of the Church, has given us a most powerful means for
appeasing her Son's anger, uprooting heresy and reforming Christian morals, in the
Confraternity of the Holy Rosary, as events have shown. It has brought back
charity and the frequent reception of the sacraments as in the first golden
centuries of the Church, and it has reformed Christian morals.

93. Pope Leo X said in his bull that this Confraternity had been
founded in honour of God and of the Blessed Virgin as a wall to hold back the
evils that were going to break upon the Church. Gregory XIII said that the
Rosary was given us from heaven as a means of appeasing God's anger and of
imploring the intercession of our Lady.

Julius III said that the
Rosary was inspired by God that heaven might be more easily opened to us
through the favours of our Lady.

Paul III and Blessed Pius V
declared that the Rosary was given to the faithful in order that they might
have spiritual peace and consolation more easily. Surely everyone will want to
join a confraternity which was founded for such noble purposes.

94. Father Dominic, a Carthusian, who was deeply devoted to the holy
Rosary, had a vision in which he saw heaven opened and the whole heavenly court
assembled in magnificent array. He heard them sing the Rosary in an enchanting
melody, and each decade was in honour of a mystery of the life, passion, or
glory of Jesus Christ and his holy Mother. Fr. Dominic noticed that whenever
they pronounced the holy name of Mary they bowed their heads, and at the name
of Jesus they genuflected and gave thanks to God for the great good he had
wrought in heaven and on earth through the holy Rosary. He also saw our Lady
and the Saints present to God the Rosaries which the Confraternity members say
here on earth. He noticed too that they were praying for those who practice
this devotion. He also saw beautiful crowns without number, which were made of
sweet-smelling flowers, for those who say the Rosary devoutly. He learned that
by every Rosary that they say they make a crown for themselves which they will
be able to wear in heaven.

This holy Carthusian's vision
is very much like that which the Beloved Disciple had, in which he saw a great
multitude of angels and saints, who continually praised and blessed Jesus
Christ for all that he had done and suffered on earth for our salvation. And is
not this what the devout members of the Rosary Confraternity do?

95. It must not be imagined that the Rosary is only for women, and for
simple and unlearned people; it is also for men and for the greatest of men. As
soon as St. Dominic acquainted Pope Innocent III with the fact that he had
received a command from heaven to establish the Confraternity of the Holy
Rosary, the Holy Father gave it his full approval, urged St. Dominic to preach
it, and said that he wished to become a member himself. Even Cardinals embraced
the devotion with great fervour, which prompted Lopez to say, "Neither sex
nor age nor any other condition has kept anyone from devotion to the
Rosary."

Members of this Confraternity
have come from all walks of life: dukes, princes, kings, as well as prelates,
cardinals and Sovereign Pontiffs. It would take too long to list them in this
little book. If you join this Confraternity, dear reader, you will share in
their devotion and their graces on earth and their glory in heaven. "Since
you are united to them in their devotion, you will share in their dignity."

Thirtieth Rose

96. If privileges, graces and indulgences of a confraternity make God
alone it valuable to us, then that of the Rosary is the one to be most
recommended, since it is the most favoured and enriched with indulgences, and
ever since its inception there has hardly been a pope who has not opened the
treasures of the Church to enrich it with further privileges. And since example
is more persuasive than words and favours, the Holy Fathers have found that
there was no better way to show their high regard for this holy Confraternity
than to join it themselves.

Here is a short summary of
the indulgences which they wholeheartedly granted to the Confraternity of the
Holy Rosary, and which were confirmed again by our Holy Father Pope Innocent XI
on 31st July 1679, and received and made public by the Archbishop of Paris on
25th September of the same year:

1. Members may gain a plenary
indulgence on the day of joining the Confraternity;

2. A plenary indulgence at
the hour of death;

3 For each rosary of five
decades recited: ten years and ten quarantines;

4. Each time that members say
the holy names of Jesus and Mary devoutly: seven days' indulgence;

5. For those who assist with
devotion at the procession of the holy Rosary: seven years and seven
quarantines of indulgence;

6. Members who have made a
good confession and are genuinely sorry for their sins may gain a plenary
indulgence on certain days by visiting the Rosary Chapel in the church where
the Confraternity is established. This may be gained on the first Sunday of
every month, and on the feasts of our Lord and our Lady;

7. To those who assist at the
Salve Regina: a hundred days' indulgence;

8. To those who openly wear
the rosary out of devotion and to set a good example: a hundred days'
indulgence;

9. Sick members who are
unable to go to church may gain a plenary indulgence by going to confession and
Communion and by saying that day the whole Rosary, or at least five decades;

10. The Sovereign Pontiffs
have shown their generosity towards members of the Rosary Confraternity by
allowing them to gain the indulgences attached to the Stations of the Cross by
visiting five altars in the church where the Rosary Confraternity is
established, and by saying the Our Father and Hail Mary five times before each
altar, for the well-being of the Church. If there are only one or two altars in
the Confraternity church, they should say the Our Father and Hail Mary
twenty-five times before one of them.

97. This is a wonderful favour granted to Confraternity members, for in
the Station Churches in Rome plenary indulgences can be obtained, souls can be
delivered from purgatory, and many other important remissions can be gained.
and these are available to members without trouble, without expense, and
without leaving their own country. And even if the Confraternity is not
established in the place where the members live, they can gain the very same
indulgences by visiting five altars in any church. This concession was granted
by Leo X.

The Sacred Congregation of
Indulgences drew up a list of certain definite days on which those outside the
city of Rome could gain the indulgences of the Stations of Rome. The Holy
Father approved this list on March 7th, 1678, and commanded that it be strictly
observed. These indulgences can be gained on the following days:

All the Sundays of Advent;
each of the three Ember Days; Christmas Eve, and the Masses of midnight, of the
Dawn and of the Day; the feasts of St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, the
Holy Innocents, the Circumcision and the Epiphany; the Sundays of Septuagesima,
Sexagesima, Quinquagesima, and every day from Ash Wednesday to Low Sunday
inclusively; each of the three Rogation days; Ascension; the vigil of
Pentecost, and every day of its octave; and the three days of the September Ember
Days.

Dear brothers and sisters of
the Confraternity, there are numerous other indulgences which you can gain. If
you want to know about them, read the complete list of indulgences which have
been granted to the members of the Confraternity. You will see there the names
of the popes, the year in which they granted the indulgence, and many other
particulars which I have not been able to include in this little summary.

FOURTH DECADE
The surpassing merit of the holy Rosary as seen in the wonders God has worked
through it.

Thirty-first Rose

98. The saintly Blanche of Castille, Queen of France, was deeply
grieved because twelve years after her marriage she was still childless. When
St. Dominic went to see her he advised her to say the Rosary every day to ask
God for the grace of motherhood, and she faithfully carried out his advice. In
the year 1213 she gave birth to her eldest child, who was called Philip. But
when the child died in infancy, the Queen sought our Lady's help more than
ever, and had a large number of rosaries given out to all members of the court
and to people in several towns in the Kingdom, asking them to pray to God for a
blessing which this time would be complete. This was granted to her, for in
1215 St. Louis was born, the prince who was to become the glory of France and
the model of Christian kings.

99. Alphonsus VIII, King of Aragon and Castille, had been leading a
disorderly life and had been punished by God in several ways, and he was forced
to take refuge in a town belonging to one of his allies.

St. Dominic happened to be in
this town on Christmas Day and he preached on the Rosary as he usually did, and
spoke of the graces that we obtain through this devotion. He mentioned, among
other things, that those who said the Rosary devoutly would overcome their
enemies and regain all they had lost.

The King listened attentively
and sent for St. Dominic to ask whether what he had said about the Rosary was
really true. The Saint assured him that nothing was more true, and that if only
he would practice this devotion and join the Confraternity, he would see for
himself. The King resolved to say the Rosary every day and persevered for a
year in doing so. The very next Christmas, our Lady appeared to him at the end
of his Rosary and said, "Alphonsus, you have served me for a year by
saying my Rosary devoutly every day, so I have come to reward you. I have
obtained the forgiveness of your sins from my Son. Here is a rosary, which I
present to you; wear it, and I promise you that none of your enemies will be
able to harm you."

Our Lady vanished, leaving
the King overjoyed and greatly encouraged; he immediately went in search of the
Queen and told her all about our Lady's gift and the promise that went with it.
He touched her eyes with this rosary, for she had lost her sight, and she was
cured.

Shortly afterwards the King
rallied some troops and with the help of his allies boldly attacked his
enemies. He forced them to give back the territory they had taken from him and
make reparation for his losses. They were completely routed, and he became so
successful in war that soldiers came from all sides to fight under his
standard, because it seemed that, whenever he went into battle, the victory was
sure to be his.

This is not surprising
because he never went into battle without first saying his Rosary on his knees.
He made certain that the whole of his court joined the Confraternity of the
Rosary and he saw to it that all his officials and servants were devoted to it.

The Queen also joined the
Confraternity, and they both persevered in the service of Blessed Virgin and
lived very holy lives.

Thirty-second Rose

100. St. Dominic had a cousin named Don Perez or Pedro, who was leading
a highly immoral life. When he heard that his cousin was preaching on the
wonders of the Rosary and learned that several people had been converted and
had amended their lives by means of it, he said, "I had given up all hope
of being saved but now I am beginning to take heart again. I really must hear
this man of God."

So one day he went to hear
one of St. Dominic's sermons. When the latter caught sight of him, he struck
out against sin more zealously than ever before, and from the depths of his
heart he besought God to enlighten his cousin and let him see what a deplorable
state his soul was in.

At first, Don Perez was
somewhat alarmed, but he still did not resolve to change his ways. He came once
more to hear the Saint preach and his cousin, realizing that a heart as
hardened as his could only be moved by something extraordinary, cried out with
a loud voice, "Lord Jesus, grant that this whole congregation may see the
state of the man who has just come into your house."

Then everyone suddenly saw
that Don Perez was completely surrounded by a band of devils in the form of
hideous beasts, who were holding him in great iron chains. People fled in all
directions in abject terror, and Don Perez himself was even more appalled when
he saw how everyone shunned him. St. Dominic told them all to stand still and
said to his cousin, "Unhappy man that you are, acknowledge the deplorable
state you are in and throw yourself at our Lady's feet. Take this rosary, say
it with devotion and with true sorrow for all your sins, and make a resolution
to amend your life."

Don Perez knelt down and said
the Rosary; he then felt the desire to make his confession, which he did with
heartfelt contrition. St. Dominic ordered him to say the Rosary every day; he
promised to do this and he entered his own name in the register of the
Confraternity. When he left the church his face was no longer horrible to
behold but shining like that of an angel. Thereafter he persevered in devotion
to the Rosary, led a well-ordered life and died a happy death.

Thirty-third Rose

101. When St. Dominic was preaching the Rosary near Carcassone, an
Albigensian was brought to him who was possessed by the devil. The Saint
exorcised him in the presence of a great crowd of people; it appears that over
twelve thousand had come to hear him speak. The devils who were in possession
of this wretched man were forced to answer St. Dominic's questions in spite of
themselves. They said:

1. that there were fifteen
thousand of them in the body of that poor man, because he had attacked the
fifteen mysteries of the Rosary;

2. that by the Rosary which
he preached, he put fear and horror into the depths of hell, and that he was
the man they hated most throughout the world because of the souls he snatched
from them by the devotion of the Rosary.

3. They revealed several
other things.

St. Dominic put his rosary
round the neck of the possessed man and asked them who, of all the saints in
heaven, was the one they feared most, who should therefore be the most loved
and revered by men.

At this they let out such
unearthly screams that most of the people fell to the ground, seized with fear.
Then, using all their cunning so as not to answer, the devils wept and wailed
in such a pitiful way that many of the people wept also, out of pure natural
pity. The devils, speaking through the mouth of the Albigensian, pleaded in a
heart-rending voice, "Dominic, Dominic, have pity on us, we promise you we
will never harm you.

"You have always had
compassion for sinners and those in distress; have pity on us, for we are in
grievous straits. We are suffering so much already, why do you delight in
increasing our pains? Can't you be satisfied with the pains we now endure? Have
mercy on us, have mercy on us!"

102. St. Dominic was not in the least moved by the pathetic words of
those wretched spirits, and told them he would not let them alone until they
had answered his question. Then they said they would whisper the answer in such
a way that only St. Dominic would be able to hear. The latter firmly insisted
upon their answering clearly and audibly. Then the devils kept quiet and would
not say another word, completely disregarding St. Dominic's orders.

So he knelt down and said
this prayer to our Lady: "Oh, most glorious Virgin Mary, I implore you by
the power of the holy Rosary command these enemies of the human race to answer
my question."

No sooner had he said this
prayer than a glowing flame leaped out of the ears, nostrils and mouth of the
possessed man. Everyone shook with fear, but the fire did not hurt anyone. Then
the devils cried, "Dominic, we beseech you, by the passion of Jesus Christ
and the merits of his holy Mother and of all the saints, let us leave the body
of this man without speaking further; for the angels will answer your question
whenever you wish. After all, are we not liars - so why should you want to believe
us? Do not torment us any more, have pity on us."

"Woe to you, wretched
spirits, who do not deserve to be heard," St. Dominic said, and kneeling
down he prayed to the Blessed Virgin: "O most worthy Mother of Wisdom, I
am praying for the people assembled here, who have already learned how to say
the Angelic Salutation properly. I beg you for the salvation of those here
present, compel these adversaries of yours to proclaim the whole truth here and
now before the people."

St. Dominic had scarcely finished
this prayer when he saw the Blessed Virgin near at hand surrounded by a
multitude of angels. She struck the possessed man with a golden rod that she
held and said, "Answer my servant Dominic at once." (It must be noted
that the people neither saw nor heard our Lady, only St. Dominic.)

103. Then the devils started screaming:

104. "Oh, you who are our enemy, our downfall and our destruction,
why have you come from heaven to torture us so grievously? O advocate of
sinners, you who snatch them from the very jaws of hell, you who are a most
sure path to heaven, must we, in spite of ourselves, tell the whole truth and
confess before everyone who it is who is the cause of our shame and our ruin?
Oh, woe to us, princes of darkness.

"Then listen, you
Christians. This Mother of Jesus is most powerful in saving her servants from
falling into hell. She is like the sun which destroys the darkness of our wiles
and subtlety. It is she who uncovers our hidden plots, breaks our snares, and
makes our temptations useless and ineffective.

"We have to say,
however, reluctantly, that no soul who has really persevered in her service has
ever been damned with us; one single sigh that she offers to the Blessed
Trinity is worth far more than all the prayers, desires, and aspirations of all
the saints. We fear her more than all the other saints in heaven together, and
we have no success with her faithful servants.

"Many Christians who
call on her at the hour of death and who really ought to be damned according to
our ordinary standards are saved by her intercession. And if that Marietta (it
is thus in their fury they called her) did not counter our plans and our
efforts, we should have overcome the Church and destroyed it long before this,
and caused all the Orders in the Church to fall into error and infidelity.

"Now that we are forced
to speak, we must also tell you that nobody who perseveres in saying the Rosary
will be damned, because she obtains for her servants the grace of true
contrition for their sins by which they obtain pardon and mercy."

Then St. Dominic had all the
people say the Rosary very slowly and with great devotion, and a wonderful
thing happened: at each Hail Mary which he and the people said, a large number
of devils issued forth from the wretched man's body under the guise of red-hot
coals. When the devils had all been expelled and the heretic completely
delivered from them, our Lady, although invisible, gave her blessing to the
assembled company, and they were filled with joy.

A large number of heretics were
converted because of this miracle and joined the Confraternity of the Holy
Rosary.

Thirty-fourth Rose

105. It is almost impossible to do credit sufficiently to the victories
that Count Simon de Montfort won against the Albigensians under the patronage
of Our Lady of the Rosary. They are so famous that the world has never seen
anything to match them. One day he defeated ten thousand heretics with a force
of five hundred men; on another occasion he overcame three thousand with only
thirty men; finally, with eight hundred horsemen and one thousand infantrymen
he completely routed the army of the King of Aragon, which was a hundred
thousand strong, and this with the loss on his side of only one horseman and
eight soldiers.

106. Our Lady also protected Alan de l'Anvallay, a Breton knight, from
great perils. He too was fighting for the faith against the Albigensians. One
day, when he found himself surrounded by enemies on all sides, our Lady let
fall a hundred and fifty rocks upon his enemies and he was delivered from their
hands.

Another day, when his ship
had foundered and was about to sink, this good Mother caused a hundred and
fifty small hills to appear miraculously above the water and by means of them
they reached Brittany in safety. In thanksgiving to our Lady for the miracles
she had worked on his behalf in answer to his daily Rosary, he built a
monastery at Dinan for the religious of the new Order of St. Dominic and,
having become a religious himself, he died a holy death at Orleans.

107. Othère, also a Breton soldier, from Vaucouleurs, often put whole
companies of heretics or robbers to flight, wearing his rosary on his arm and
on the hilt of his sword. Once when he had beaten his enemies, they admitted
that they had seen his sword shining brightly, and another time had noticed a
shield on his arm on which our Lord, our Lady and the saints were depicted.
This shield made him invisible and gave him the strength to attack well.

Another time he defeated
twenty thousand heretics with only ten companies without losing a single man.
This so impressed the general of the heretics' army that he sought out Othère,
abjured his heresy and declared that he had seen him surrounded by flaming
swords during the battle.

Thirty-fifth Rose

108. Blessed Alan relates that a certain Cardinal Pierre, whose titular
church was that of St. Mary-beyond-the-Tiber, was a great friend of St.
Dominic's and had learned from him to have a great devotion to the holy Rosary.
He grew to love it so much that he never ceased singing its praises and
encouraging everyone he met to embrace it. Eventually he was sent as legate to
the Holy Land to the Christians who were fighting against the Saracens. So
successfully did he convince the Christian army of the power of the Rosary that
they all started saying it and stormed heaven for help in a battle in which
they knew they would be pitifully outnumbered. And in fact, their three
thousand triumphed over an enemy of one hundred thousand.

As we have seen, the devils
have an overwhelming fear of the Rosary. St. Bernard says that the Angelic
Salutation puts them to flight and makes all hell tremble. Blessed Alan assures
us that he has seen several people delivered from Satan's bondage after taking
up the holy Rosary, even though they had previously sold themselves to him,
body and soul, by renouncing their baptismal vows and their allegiance to Jesus
Christ.

Thirty-sixth Rose

109. In 1578, a woman of Antwerp had given herself to the devil and
signed a contract with her own blood. Shortly afterwards she was stricken with
remorse and had an intense desire to make amends for this terrible deed. So she
sought out a kind and wise confessor to find out how she could be set free from
the power of the devil.

She found a wise and holy
priest, who advised her to go to Fr. Henry, director of the Confraternity of
the Holy Rosary, at the Dominican Friary, to be enrolled there and to make her
confession. Accordingly, she asked to see him but met, not Fr. Henry, but the
devil disguised as a friar. He reproved her severely and said she could never
hope to receive God's grace, and there was no way of revoking what she had
signed. This grieved her greatly but she did not lose hope in God's mercy and
sought out Fr. Henry once more, only to find the devil a second time, and to
meet with a second rebuff. She came back a third time and then at last, by
divine providence, she found Fr. Henry in person, the priest whom she had been
looking for, and he treated her with great kindness, urging her to throw
herself on the mercy of God and to make a good confession. He then received her
into the Confraternity and told her to say the Rosary frequently.

One day, while Fr. Henry was
celebrating Mass for her, our Lady forced the devil to give her back the
contract she had signed. In this way she was delivered from the devil by the
authority of Mary and by devotion to the holy Rosary.

Thirty-seventh Rose

110. A nobleman who had several daughters placed one of them in a lax
monastery where the nuns were concerned only with vanity and pleasures. Their
confessor, on the other hand, was a zealous priest with a great devotion to the
holy Rosary. Wishing to guide this nun into a better way of life, he ordered
her to say the Rosary every day in honour of the Blessed Virgin, while
meditating on the life, passion and glory of Jesus Christ.

She joyously undertook this
devotion, and little by little she grew to have a repugnance for the wayward
habits of her sisters in religion. She developed a love of silence and prayer,
in spite of the fact that the others despised and ridiculed her and called her
a fanatic.

It was at this time that a
holy priest, who was making the visitation of the convent, had a strange vision
during his meditation: he saw a nun in her room, rapt in prayer, kneeling in
front of a Lady of great beauty who was surrounded by angels. The latter had
flaming spears with which they repelled a crowd of devils who wanted to come
in. These evil spirits then fled to the other nuns' rooms under the guise of
vile animals.

By this vision the priest
became aware of the lamentable state of that monastery and was so upset that he
thought he might die of grief. He sent for the young religious and exhorted her
to persevere. As he pondered on the value of the Rosary, he decided to try and
reform the Sisters by means of it. He bought a supply of beautiful rosaries and
gave one to each nun, imploring them to say it every day and promising them
that, if they would only say it faithfully, he would not try to force them to
alter their lives. Wonderful and strange though it may seem, the nuns willingly
accepted the rosaries and promised to say the prayer on that condition. Little
by little they began to give up their empty and worldly pursuits, letting
silence and recollection come into their lives. In less than a year they all
asked that the monastery be reformed.

The Rosary worked more
changes in their hearts than the priest could have done by exhorting and
commanding them.

Thirty-eighth Rose

111. A Spanish countess who had been taught the holy Rosary by St.
Dominic used to say it faithfully every day, with the result that she was
making marvellous progress in her spiritual life. Since her only desire was to
attain to perfection, she asked a bishop who was a renowned preacher for some
practices that would help her to become perfect. The bishop told her that,
before he could give her any advice, she would have to let him know the state
of her soul and what her religious exercises were. She answered that her most
important exercise was the Rosary, which she said every day, meditating on the
Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries, and that she had profited greatly by
so doing.

The Bishop was overjoyed to
hear her explain what priceless lessons the mysteries contain. "I have
been a doctor of theology for twenty years," he exclaimed, "and I
have read many excellent books on various devotional practices. But never
before have I come across one better than this or more conformed to the
Christian life. From now on I shall follow your example, and I shall preach the
Rosary."

He did so with such success
that in a short while he saw his diocese changed for the better. There was a
notable decline in immorality and worldliness of all kinds as well as in
gambling. There were several instances of people being brought back to the
faith, of sinners making restitution for their crimes, and of others sincerely
resolving to give up their lives of vice. Religious fervour and Christian
charity began to flourish. These changes were all the more remarkable because
this bishop had been striving to reform his diocese for some time but with
hardly any results.

To inculcate the devotion of
the Rosary all the more, the bishop also wore a beautiful rosary at his side
and always showed it to his congregation when he preached. He used to say,
"My dear brethren, I am a doctor of theology, and of canon and civil law,
but I say to you, as your bishop, that I take more pride in wearing the rosary
of the Blessed Virgin than in any of my episcopal regalia or academic
robes."

Thirty-ninth Rose

112. A Danish priest used to love to tell how the very same improvement
that the Spanish bishop noticed in his diocese had occurred in his own parish.
He always told his story with great joy of heart because it gave such glory to
God.

"I had," he said, "preached
as compellingly as I could, touching on many aspects of our holy Faith, and
using every argument I could possibly think of to get people to amend their way
of life, but in vain. Finally, I decided to preach the holy Rosary. I told my
congregations how precious it was and taught them how to say it, and I affirm
that having taught them to appreciate this devotion, I saw a manifest change
within six months.

"How true it is that
this God-given prayer has a divine power to touch our hearts and inspire them
with a horror of sin and a love of virtue!"

One day our Lady said to
Blessed Alan, "Just as God chose the Angelic Salutation to bring about the
incarnation of his Word and the redemption of mankind, so those who want to
bring about moral reforms and regenerate them in Jesus Christ must honour me
and greet me with the same salutation. I am the channel by which God came to
men, and so, next to Jesus Christ, it is through me that men must obtain grace
and virtue."

113. I, who write this, have learnt from my own experience that the
Rosary has the power to convert even the most hardened hearts. I have known
people who have gone to missions and heard sermons on the most terrifying
subjects without being in the least moved; and yet, after they had, on my advice,
started to say the Rosary every day. they eventually became converted and gave
themselves completely to God.

When I have gone back to
parishes where I had given missions, I have seen tremendous differences between
them; in those parishes where the people had given up the Rosary, they had
generally fallen back into their sinful ways, whereas in places where the
Rosary was said faithfully I found the people were persevering in the grace of
God and advancing in virtue day by day.

Fortieth Rose

114. Blessed Alan de la Roche, Fr. Jean Dumont, Fr. Thomas, the
chronicles of St. Dominic and other writers who have seen these things with
their own eyes speak of the marvellous conversions that are brought about by
this wonderful devotion. Great sinners, both men and women, have been converted
after twenty, thirty or forty years of sin and unspeakable vice. I will not
even relate those which I have seen myself because I do not want to make this
book too long; there are several reasons why I would rather not talk about
them.

Dear reader, if you practice
and preach this devotion, you will learn more, by your own experience, than
from spiritual books, and you will have the happiness of being rewarded by our
Lady in accordance with the promises she made to St. Dominic, to Blessed Alan
de la Roche, and to those who encourage this devotion which is so dear to her.
For the Rosary teaches people about the virtues of Jesus and Mary, and leads
them to mental prayer, to the imitation of Jesus Christ, to the frequentation of
the sacraments, the practice of genuine virtue and of all kinds of good works.
It also helps us to gain many wonderful indulgences, which people are unaware
of because those who preach this devotion hardly ever mention them and content
themselves with giving a popular sermon on the Rosary which very often produces
admiration but not instruction.

115. Finally, I shall content myself with saying, in company with
Blessed Alan de la Roche, that the Rosary is a source and a store-house of
countless blessings.

1. Sinners obtain pardon;

2 Those who thirst are
refreshed;

3. Those who are fettered are
set free;

4 Those who weep find joy;

5. Those who are tempted find
peace;

6 Those in need find help;

7. Religious are reformed;

8 The ignorant are
instructed;

9. The living learn to resist
spiritual decline;

10 The dead have their pains
eased by suffrages.

Our Lady once said to Blessed
Alan, "I want those who are devoted to my Rosary to have my Son's grace
and blessing during their lifetime, at death and after their death. I want them
to be freed from all slavery so that they will be like kings, with crowns on
their heads, sceptres in their hands and to reign in eternal glory. Amen.

FIFTH DECADE
How to say the Rosary worthily

Forty-first Rose

116. It. is not so much the length of a prayer as the fervour with
which it is said which pleases God and touches his heart. A single Hail Mary
said properly is worth more than a hundred and fifty said badly. Most Catholics
say the Rosary, either the whole fifteen mysteries or five of them, or at least
a few decades. Why is it then that so few of them give up their sins and make
progress in virtue, if not because they are not saying them as they should.

117. It is a good thing to think over how we should pray if we want to
please God and become more holy.

1. Firstly, to say the holy
Rosary with advantage one must be in a state of grace or at least be fully
determined to give up sin, for all our theology teaches us that good works and
prayers are dead works if they are done in a state of mortal sin. Therefore,
they can neither be pleasing to God nor help us to gain eternal life. As
Scripture says, "Praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner"
(Ecclus. 15).

The praise and greeting of
the angel and the very prayer of Jesus Christ are not pleasing to God when they
are said by unrepentant sinners.

"These people honour me
with their lips, but their heart is far from me" (Mark 7:6).

Those who join my
confraternities (says Jesus Christ), who say the Rosary every day, without any
contrition for their sins, offer me lip service only and their hearts are far
from me.

2. I have just said that a
person must "at least be fully determined to give up sin," 1) because
if it were true that God only heard the prayers of those in a state of grace,
it would follow that those who are in a state of serious sin should not pray at
all. This is an erroneous teaching which has been condemned by the Church,
because sinners, of course, need to pray far more than good people. Were this
horrible doctrine true, it would be useless and futile to tell a sinner to say
the Rosary, because it would never help him; 2) because they join one of our
Lady's confraternities, or say the Rosary or some other prayer, without having
the slightest intention of giving up sin, they join the ranks of her false
devotees. These presumptuous and impenitent devotees, hiding under her mantle,
with the scapular round their necks and the rosary in their hands, cry out,
"Blessed Virgin, good Mother, Hail Mary," and yet at the same time
they are crucifying Jesus Christ and tearing his flesh anew by their sins. It
is a great tragedy, but from the ranks of our Lady's most holy confraternities
souls are falling into the fires of hell.

118. We earnestly advise everyone to say the Rosary: the virtuous, that
they may persevere and grow in the grace of God; sinners, that they may rise
from their sins. But God forbid we should ever encourage a sinner to think that
our Lady will protect him with her mantle if he continues to love sin, for it
will turn into a mantle of damnation which will hide his sins from the public
eye. The Rosary, which is a remedy for all ills, would then be turned into a
deadly poison. Corruptio optimi pessima.

The learned Cardinal Hugues
tells us that one should be as pure as an angel to approach the Blessed Virgin
and say the Angelic Salutation. One day, our Lady showed herself to an immoral
man who used to say the Rosary regularly every day. She showed him a bowl of
beautiful fruit, but the bowl itself was covered with filth. The man was
horrified to see this, and our Lady said to him, "This is the way you are
honouring me. You are giving me beautiful roses in a dirty bowl. Do you think I
can find them pleasing to me?"

Forty-second Rose

119. In order to pray well, it is not enough to give expression to our
petitions by means of that most excellent of all prayers, the Rosary, but we
must also pray with great attention, for God listens more to the voice of the
heart than that of the mouth. To be guilty of wilful distractions during prayer
would show a great lack of respect and reverence; it would make our Rosaries
unfruitful and make us guilty of sin.

How can we expect God to
listen to us if we ourselves do not pay attention to what we are saying? How
can we expect him to be pleased if, while in the presence of his tremendous
majesty, we give in to distractions, like a child running after a butterfly?
People who do that forfeit God's blessing, which is changed into a curse for
having treated the things of God disrespectfully: "Cursed be the one who
does God's work negligently." Jer. 48:10.

120. Of course, you cannot say your Rosary without having a few
involuntary distractions; it is even difficult to say a Hail Mary without your
imagination troubling you a little, for it is never still; but you can say it
without voluntary distractions, and you must take all sorts of precautions to
lessen involuntary distractions and to control your imagination.

To do this, put yourself in
the presence of God and imagine that God and his Blessed Mother are watching
you, and that your guardian angel is at your right hand, taking your Hail
Marys, if they are well said, and using them like roses to make crowns for
Jesus and Mary. But remember that at your left hand is the devil, ready to pounce
on every Hail Mary that comes his way and to write it down in his book of
death, if they are not said with attention, devotion, and reverence. Above all,
do not fail to offer up each decade in honour of one of the mysteries, and try
to form a picture in your mind of Jesus and Mary in connection with that
mystery.

121. We read in the life of Blessed Hermann of the Order of the
Premonstratensians, that at one time when he used to say the Rosary attentively
and devoutly while meditating on the mysteries, our Lady used to appear to him
resplendent in breathtaking majesty and beauty. But, as time went on, his
fervour cooled and he fell into the way of saying his Rosary hurriedly and
without giving it his full attention. Then one day our Lady appeared to him
again, but this time she was far from beautiful, and her face was furrowed and
drawn with sadness. Blessed Hermann was appalled at the change in her, and our
Lady explained, "This is how I look to you, Hermann, because this is how
you are treating me; as a woman to be despised and of no importance. Why do you
no longer greet me with respect and attention while meditating on my mysteries
and praising my privileges?"

Forty-third Rose

122. When the Rosary is well said, it gives Jesus and Mary more glory
and is more meritorious for the soul than any other prayer. But it is also the
hardest prayer to say well and to persevere in, owing especially to the
distractions which almost inevitably attend the constant repetition of the same
words.

When we say the Little Office
of Our Lady, or the Seven Penitential Psalms, or any prayers other than the
Rosary, the variety of words and expressions keeps us alert, prevents our
imagination from wandering, and so makes it easier for us to say them well. On
the contrary, because of the constant repetition of the Our Father and Hail
Mary in the same unvarying form, it is difficult, while saying the Rosary, not
to become wearied and inclined to sleep, or to turn to other prayers that are
more refreshing and less tedious. This shows that one needs much greater
devotion to persevere in saying the Rosary than in saying any other prayer,
even the psalter of David.

123. Our imagination, which is hardly still a minute, makes our task
harder, and then of course there is the devil who never tires of trying to
distract us and keep us from praying. To what ends does not the evil one go
against us while we are engaged in saying our Rosary against him.

Being human, we easily become
tired and slipshod, but the devil makes these difficulties worse when we are
saying the Rosary. Before we even begin, he makes us feel bored, distracted, or
exhausted; and when we have started praying, he oppresses us from all sides,
and when after much difficulty and many distractions, we have finished, he whispers
to us, "What you have just said is worthless. It is useless for you to say
the Rosary. You had better get on with other things. It is only a waste of time
to pray without paying attention to what you are saying; half-an-hour's
meditation or some spiritual reading would be much better. Tomorrow, when you
are not feeling so sluggish, you'll pray better; leave the rest of your Rosary
till then." By tricks of this kind the devil gets us to give up the Rosary
altogether or to say it less often, and we keep putting it off or change to
some other devotion.

124. Dear friend of the Rosary Confraternity, do not listen to the
devil, but be of good heart, even if your imagination has been bothering you
throughout your Rosary, filling your mind with all kinds of distracting
thoughts, so long as you tried your best to get rid of them as soon as you
noticed them. Always remember that the best Rosary is the one with the most
merit, and there is more merit in praying when it is hard than when it is easy.
Prayer is all the harder when it is, naturally speaking, distasteful to the
soul and is filled with those annoying little ants and flies running about in
your imagination, against your will, and scarcely allowing you the time to
enjoy a little peace and appreciate the beauty of what you are saying.

125. Even if you have to fight distractions all through your whole
Rosary, be sure to fight well, arms in hand: that is to say, do not stop saying
your Rosary even if it is difficult to say and you have no sensible devotion.
It is a terrible battle, but one that is profitable to the faithful soul. If
you put down your arms, that is, if you give up the Rosary, you will be
admitting defeat and then the devil, having got what he wanted, will leave you
in peace, and on the day of judgment will taunt you because of your
faithlessness and lack of courage. "He who is faithful in little things
will also be faithful in those that are greater." Luke 16:10.

He who is faithful in
rejecting the smallest distractions when he says even the smallest prayer, will
also be faithful in great things. Nothing is more certain, since the Holy
Spirit has told us so.

So all of you, servants and
handmaids of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin, who have made up your minds
to say the Rosary every day, be of good heart. Do not let the multitude of
flies (as I call the distractions that make war on you during prayer) make you
abandon the company of Jesus and Mary, in whose holy presence you are when
saying the Rosary. In what follows I shall give you suggestions for diminishing
distractions in prayer.

Forty-fourth Rose

126. After you have invoked the Holy Spirit, in order to say your
Rosary well, place yourself for a moment in the presence of God and make the
offering of the decades in the way I will show you later.

Before beginning a decade,
pause for a moment or two, depending on how much time you have, and contemplate
the mystery that you are about to honour in that decade. Always be sure to ask,
by this mystery and through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, for one of
the virtues that shines forth most in this mystery or one of which you are in
particular need.

Take great care to avoid the
two pitfalls that most people fall into during the Rosary. The first is the
danger of not asking for any graces at all, so that if some good people were
asked their Rosary intention they would not know what to say. So, whenever you
say your Rosary, be sure to ask for some special grace or virtue, or strength
to overcome some sin.

The second fault commonly
committed in saying the Rosary is to have no intention other than that of
getting it over with as quickly as possible. This is because so many look upon
the Rosary as a burden, which weighs heavily upon them when it has not been
said, especially when we have promised to say it regularly or have been told to
say it as a penance more or less against our will.

127. It is sad to see how most people say the Rosary. They say it
astonishingly fast, slipping over part of the words. We could not possibly
expect anyone, even the most important person, to think that a slipshod address
of this kind was a compliment, and yet we imagine that Jesus and Mary will be
honoured by it!

Small wonder, then, that the
most sacred prayers of our holy religion seem to bear no fruit, and that, after
saying thousands of Rosaries, we are still no better than we were before.

Dear friend of the
Confraternity, I beg you to restrain your natural precipitation when saying
your Rosary, and make some pauses in the middle of the Our Father and Hail Mary,
and a smaller one after the words of the Our Father and Hail Mary which I have
marked with a cross, as follows:

Our Father who art in heaven,
+ hallowed by thy name, + thy kingdom come, + thy will be done + on earth as it
is in heaven. + Give us this day + our daily bread, + and forgive us our
trespasses + as we forgive those who trespass against us, + and lead us not
into temptation, + but deliver us from evil. Amen. +

Hail, Mary, full of grace, +
the Lord is with thee, + blessed art thou among women, + and blessed is the
fruit of thy womb, Jesus. +

Holy Mary, Mother of God, +
pray for us sinners, now + and at the hour of our death. Amen. +

At first, you may find it
difficult to make these pauses because of your bad habit of saying prayers in a
hurry; but a decade said recollectedly in this way will be worth more than
thousands of Rosaries said in a hurry, without pausing or reflecting.

128. Blessed Alan de la Roche and other writers, including Robert
Bellarmine, tell the story of how a good priest advised three of his penitents,
who happened to be sisters, to say the Rosary every day without fail for a
whole year. This was so that they might make a beautiful robe of glory for the
Blessed Virgin out of their Rosaries. This was a secret that the priest had
received from heaven.

So the three sisters said the
Rosary faithfully for a year, and on the feast of the Purification our Lady
appeared to them at night when they had retired. St. Catherine and St. Agnes
were with her, and she was wearing a dress brilliant with light, on which was
written in letters of gold the words "Hail, Mary, full of grace." Our
Lady approached the eldest sister and said, "I greet you, my daughter, who
have greeted me so often and so well. I want to thank you for the beautiful robes
you have made me." The two virgin saints who accompanied our Lady also
thanked her and all three disappeared.

An hour later, our Lady, with
the same two companions, entered the room again, but this time she was wearing
a green dress which had no gold lettering and did not shine. She went to the
second sister and thanked her for the robe she had made by saying her Rosary.
But since this sister had seen our Lady appear to the eldest sister much more
magnificently dressed, she asked the reason why. Our Lady answered, "Your
sister made me more beautiful clothes because she has been saying the Rosary
better than you."

About an hour after this, she
appeared to the youngest of the sisters wearing tattered and dirty rags.
"My daughter," she said, "I want to thank you for these clothes
you have made me." The young girl, feeling ashamed, cried out, "O my
lady, how could I have dressed you so badly! I beg you to forgive me. Please
grant me a little more time to make you a beautiful robe by saying my Rosary
better." Our Lady and the two saints vanished, leaving the girl
heartbroken. She told her confessor everything that had happened and he urged
them to say the Rosary for another year and to say it with more devotion than
ever.

At the end of this second
year, on the same day of the Purification, our Lady, clothed in a magnificent
robe, and again attended by St. Catherine and St. Agnes, wearing crowns,
appeared to them in the evening. She said to them, "I have come to tell
you that you have earned heaven at last, and you will all have the great joy of
going there tomorrow." The three of them cried, "Our hearts are
ready, dearest Queen, our hearts are ready." Then the vision faded. That
same night they became ill and sent for their confessor, and received the last
sacraments, after having thanked him for the holy practice he had taught them.
After Compline, our Lady appeared with a large company of virgins and had the
three sisters clothed in white robes. While angels were singing, "Come,
spouses of Jesus Christ, receive the crowns which have been prepared for you
for all eternity," they departed from this life.

Some important truths can be
learned from this story: 1) How important it is to have a good director who
will counsel holy practices, especially that of the holy Rosary; 2) How
important it is to say the Rosary with attention and devotion; 3) How kind and
merciful is the Blessed Virgin to those who are sorry for the past and are
firmly resolved to do better; 4) How generous she is in rewarding us in life,
at death, and in eternity for the little services that we render her with
fidelity.

Forty-fifth Rose

129. I would like to add that the Rosary ought to be said reverently,
that is to say, it ought to be said as much as possible, kneeling, with hands
joined, clasping the rosary. However, if you are ill, you can, of course, say
it in bed; or if one is travelling it can be said while walking; if, on account
of some infirmity, you cannot kneel you can say it standing or sitting. You can
even say it while working if your duties do not allow you to leave your job,
for work with one's hands is not always incompatible with vocal prayer.

I agree that, since the soul
has its limitations and can only do so much, when we are concentrating on
manual work we are less attentive to the activities of the spirit, such as
prayer. But when we cannot do otherwise, this kind of prayer is not without its
value in our Lady's eyes, and she rewards our good- will more than our exterior
actions.

130. I advise you to divide up your Rosary into three parts and to say
each group of five decades at different times of the day. This is much better
than saying the whole fifteen decades at once.

If you cannot find the time
to say five decades all together, say a decade here and a decade there; you
will thus be able, in spite of your work and the calls upon your time, to
complete the whole Rosary before going to bed.

St. Francis de Sales set us a
very good example of fidelity in this respect: once when he was extremely tired
from the visits he had made during the day and remembered, towards midnight,
that he had left a few decades of his Rosary unsaid, he knelt down and said
them before going to bed, notwithstanding all the efforts of his secretary, who
saw he was tired and begged him to leave the rest of his prayers till the next
day.

Imitate also the
faithfulness, reverence and devotion of the holy friar, mentioned in the
chronicles of St. Francis, who always said five decades of the Rosary with
great reverence and attention before dinner. I have mentioned this earlier.

Forty-sixth Rose

131. Of all the ways of saying the holy Rosary, the most glorious to
God, most salutary to our souls, and the most terrible to the devil is that of
saying or chanting the Rosary publicly in two choirs.

God is very pleased to have
people gathered together in prayer. All the angels and the blessed unite to
praise him unceasingly. The just on earth, gathered together in various
communities, pray in common, night and day. Our Lord expressly recommended this
practice to his apostles and disciples, and promised that whenever there would
be at least two or three gathered in his name he would be there in the midst of
them.

What a wonderful thing to
have Jesus Christ in our midst! And all we have to do to have him with us is to
come together to say the Rosary. That is why the first Christians met so often
to pray together, in spite of the persecutions of the Emperors, who had
forbidden them to assemble. They preferred to risk death rather than to miss
their gatherings where our Lord was present.

132. This way of praying is of the greatest benefit to us:

1. because our minds are
usually more alert during public prayer than when we pray alone;

2. when we pray in common,
the prayer of each one belongs to the whole group and make all together but one
prayer, so that if one person is not praying well, someone else in the same
gathering who is praying better makes up for his deficiency. In the same way,
those who are strong uphold the weak, those who are fervent inspire the lukewarm,
the rich enrich the poor, the bad are merged with the good. How can a measure
of cockle be sold? This can be done very easily by mixing it with four or five
bushels of good wheat.

3. One who says his Rosary
alone only gains the merit of one Rosary; but if he says it with thirty other
people he gains the merit of thirty Rosaries. This is the law of public prayer.
How profitable, how advantageous this is!

4. Urban VIII, who was very
pleased to see how the devotion of the holy Rosary had spread to Rome and how
it was being said in two groups or choirs, particularly at the convent of Santa
Maria sopra Minerva, attached a hundred days' extra indulgence toties quoties,
whenever the Rosary was said in two choirs. This is set out in his brief Ad
perpetuam rei memoriam, of the year 1626. So every time you say the Rosary
in common, you gain a hundred days' indulgence.

5. Public prayer is more
powerful than private prayer to appease the anger of God and call down his
mercy, and the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, has always advocated it in
times of disasters and general distress.

In his Bull on the Rosary,
Pope Gregory XIII declares that we must believe, on pious faith, that the
public prayers and processions of the members of the Confraternity of the Holy
Rosary were largely responsible for the great victory over the Turkish navy at
Lepanto, which God granted to the Christians on the first Sunday of October
1571.

133. When King Louis the Just, of blessed memory, was besieging La
Rochelle, where the rebellious heretics had their strongholds, he wrote to his
mother to beg her to have public prayers offered for a victorious outcome. The
Queen-Mother decided to have the Rosary recited publicly in Paris in the
Dominican church of Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and this was carried out by the
Archbishop of Paris. It was begun on May 20th, 1628.

Both the Queen and the
Queen-Mother were present, with the Duke of Orleans, Cardinal de la
Rochefoucault, Cardinal de Bérulle, and several prelates. The court turned out
in full force as well as a great number of the general populace. The Archbishop
read the meditations on the mysteries aloud and then began the Our Father and
Hail Mary of each decade, while the congregation of religious and lay-folk
answered. At the end of the Rosary a statue of the Blessed Virgin was carried
solemnly in procession while the Litany of our Lady was sung.

This devotion was continued
every Saturday with admirable fervour and resulted in a manifest blessing from
heaven, for the King triumphed over the English at the Island of Ré and made
his triumphant entry into La Rochelle on All Saints Day of the same year. This
shows us the power of public prayer.

134. Finally, when the Rosary is said in common, it is far more
formidable to the devil, because in this public prayer it is an army that is
attacking him. He can often overcome the prayer of an individual, but if it is
joined to that of others, the devil has much more trouble in getting the best
of it. It is easy to break a single stick; but if you join it to others to make
a bundle, it cannot be broken. Vis unita fit fortior. Soldiers join
together in an army to overcome their enemies; immoral people often come
together for parties of debauchery and dancing; evil spirits join forces in
order to make us lose our souls. Why, then, should not Christians join forces
to have Jesus Christ present with them, to appease the anger of God, to draw
down his grace and mercy on us, and to frustrate and overcome the devil more
forcefully?

Dear friend of the
Confraternity, whether you live in the town or the country, near the parish
church or a chapel, go there at least every evening, with the approval of the
parish priest, together with all those who want to recite the Rosary in two
choirs. If a church or chapel is not available, say the Rosary together in your
own or a neighbour's house.

135. This is a holy practice, which God, in his mercy, has set up in
places where I have preached missions, in order to safeguard and increase the
good brought about by the mission and to prevent further sin. Before the Rosary
was established in these little towns and villages, dances and parties of
debauchery went on; dissoluteness, wantonness, blasphemy, quarrels and feuds
flourished; one heard nothing but evil songs and double-meaning talk. But now
nothing is heard but hymns and the chant of the Our Father and Hail Mary. The
only gatherings to be seen are those of twenty, thirty or a hundred or more
people who, at a fixed time, sing the praises of God as religious do.

There are even places where
the Rosary is said in common every day, at three different times of the day.
What a blessing from heaven that is! As there are wicked people everywhere, do
not expect to find that the place you live in is free of them; there will be
people who avoid going to church for the Rosary, who may even make fun of it
and do all they can, by what they do and say, to stop you from going. But do
not give up. As those wretched people will have to be separated from God and
heaven forever, already here on earth they have to be separated from the
company of Jesus and his servants.

Forty-seventh Rose

136. People of God, cut yourselves adrift from those who are damning
themselves by their impious lives, laziness and lack of devotion without delay,
and say the Rosary often with faith, humility, confidence and perseverance.

1. Our Lord told us to pray
always, after the example he has given us, because of our endless need of
prayer, on account of the darkness of our minds, our ignorance, and weakness,
and the number of our enemies. Anyone who really gives heed to this commandment
of our Master will surely not be satisfied with saying the Rosary once a year,
as the Perpetual Members do, or once a week, like the Ordinary Members, but
will say it every day without fail, as a member of the Daily Rosary, even
though the only obligation he has is that of his own salvation. "We ought
always to pray and not lose heart."

137. These are the eternal words of our Blessed Lord himself. And we
must believe his words and abide by them if we do not want to be damned. You
can explain them as you wish so long as you do not interpret them as the world
does and observe them in a worldly way. Our Lord gave us the true explanation
of his words in the examples he left us: "I have given you an example that
as I have done to you, so you do also." (Jn. 13:5.) And "he spent the
whole night in prayer to God," (Luke 6:12) as if the day was not
sufficient for it.

Often he repeated to his
Apostles these two words, "Watch and pray." The flesh is weak,
temptation is everywhere and always around you. If you do not keep up your
prayers, you will fall. And because some of them evidently thought that these
words of our Lord constituted only a counsel, they completely missed the point.
That is why they fell into temptation and sin, even though they were in the
company of Jesus Christ.

138. Dear friend of the Confraternity, if you want to lead a
fashionable life and belong to the world - by this I mean if you do not mind
falling into mortal sin from time to time and then going to confession, and
avoiding conspicuous sins which the world considers vile, while keeping up the
"respectable" ones - then, of course, there is no need for you to say
so many prayers and Rosaries. To be "respectable" you only need to say
a little prayer morning and evening, an occasional Rosary given to you for your
penance, a few decades said in a casual way, when the fancy takes you - that is
quite enough for any good-living person. If you did less, you might be branded
as a freethinker or profligate; if you do more, you are becoming an eccentric
or a fanatic.

139. But if you want to lead a true Christian life and genuinely want
to save your soul and walk in the footsteps of the saints and not fall into
serious sin, if you wish to break all the snares of the devil and extinguish
all his flaming darts, you must pray always as our Lord taught and commanded
you to do.

If you really have this wish
at heart, then you should at least say your Rosary every day, or its
equivalent.

I repeat "at
least," because probably all that you will accomplish through your Rosary
will be to avoid mortal sin and temptation. This is because you are exposed to
the strong current of the world's wickedness by which many a strong soul is
swept away; you are in the midst of the thick, clinging darkness which often
blinds even the most enlightened souls; you are surrounded by evil spirits who,
being more experienced than ever and knowing that their time is short, are more
subtle and more effective in tempting you.

It will indeed be a marvel of
grace wrought by the holy Rosary if you manage to keep out of the clutches of
the world, the devil and the flesh and sin, and gain eternal life.

140. If you do not want to believe what I say, at least learn from your
own experience. I should like to ask you if, when you were in the habit of
saying no more prayers than people usually say in the world, and saying them in
the way they usually say them, you were able to avoid serious faults and sins
that were grievous but seemed of little account to you in your blindness. Now
at last you must wake up, and if you want to live and die without sin, at least
serious sin, pray always; say your Rosary every day, as all members used to do
in the early days of the Confraternity. (See the end of this book for proof of
what I say.)

When our Blessed Lady gave
the Rosary to St. Dominic, she ordered him to say it every day and to get
others to say it daily. St. Dominic never let anyone join the Confraternity
unless he were fully determined to say it every day. If nowadays people are
allowed to be Ordinary members through saying the Rosary once a week, it is
because fervour has dwindled and charity grown cold. You get what you can from
one who is poor in prayer. "It was not so in the beginning."

Three things must be noted
here.

141. The first is that if you want to be enrolled in the Confraternity
of the Daily Rosary and share in the prayers and merits of its members, it is
not enough to be enrolled in the Ordinary Rosary or simply to make a resolution
to say it every day. In addition, you must give your name to those who have the
power of enrolling. It is also a very good thing to go to confession and
communion for this intention. The reason for this is that the Ordinary Rosary
membership does not include that of the Daily Rosary, but this latter does
include the former.

The second point I want to
make is that, absolutely speaking, it is not even a venial sin to fail to say
the Rosary every day, or every week, or every year.

The third point is that
whenever illness, or obedience to a lawful superior, or necessity, or
involuntary forgetfulness has prevented you from saying the Rosary, you do not
forfeit your share in the merits and you do not lose your participation in the
Rosaries of the other Confraternity members. So it is not absolutely necessary
for you to say two Rosaries on the following day to make up for the one you
missed, as I suppose, through no fault of your own. If, however, when you are
ill, your sickness is such that you are still able to say part of your Rosary,
you have to say that part.

"Blessed are those who
stand before you always." "Happy those who dwell in your house, O
Lord, they praise you continually." Lord Jesus, blessed are the brothers
and sisters of the Daily Rosary Confraternity who, day after day, are present
in and around your throne in heaven, so that they may meditate and contemplate
your joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. How happy they are on earth
because of the wonderful graces you bestow on them, and how blessed shall they
be in heaven where they will praise you in a special way forever and ever.

142. 2. The Rosary should be said with faith, for our Blessed Lord
said, "Believe that you will receive and it will be granted." If you
believe that you will receive what you ask from God, he will grant your
petitions. He will say to you, "As you have believed, so be it done to
you." "If anyone needs wisdom, let him ask God with faith, and
without hesitating, and - through his Rosary - it will be given him."

143. 3. Thirdly, we must pray with humility, like the publican; he was
kneeling on the ground, on two knees, not on one knee as proud and worldly
people do, or one knee on the bench. He was at the back of the church and not
in the sanctuary as the Pharisee was; his eyes were cast down, for he dared not
look up to heaven; he did not hold his head up and look about him like the
Pharisee; he beat his breast, confessing himself a sinner and asking for
forgiveness: "Be merciful to me, a sinner," and not like the Pharisee
who boasted of his good works, who despised others in their prayers. Do not
imitate the prayer of the proud Pharisee which only hardened his heart and
increased his guilt; imitate rather the humility of the tax-collector, whose
prayer obtained him the remission of his sins.

You must be on your guard
against giving yourself to what is extraordinary and asking or even desiring
knowledge of extraordinary things, visions, revelations, or other miraculous
graces which God has occasionally given to some of the saints while they were
saying the Rosary. Sola fides sufficit: Faith alone suffices now that the
Gospel and all the devotions and pious practices are sufficiently established.

Even if you suffer from
dryness of soul, distaste for prayer and interior discouragement, never give up
the least part of your Rosary; this would be a sign of pride and infidelity;
but like a brave champion of Jesus and Mary, say your Our Fathers and Hail
Marys in your dryness, without seeing, feeling, or appreciating, and concentrating
as best you can on the mysteries.

You ought not to look for
sweets or jam to eat with your daily bread, as children do; but to imitate
Jesus more perfectly in his agony you could say your Rosary more slowly
sometimes when you find it particularly hard to say: "Being in agony, he
prayed the longer," so that what was said of our Lord when he was in his
agony of prayer may be said of you: he prayed all the longer.

144. 4. Pray with great confidence, with confidence based on the
goodness and infinite generosity of God and on the promises of Jesus Christ.
God is the spring of living water which flows unceasingly into the hearts of
those who pray. The eternal Father yearns for nothing so much as to share the
life-giving waters of his grace and mercy with us. He entreats us, "All
you who thirst, come to the waters," that is, come and drink of my spring
through prayer, and when we do not pray to him he sorrowfully says that we are
forsaking him, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water."

We please our Lord when we
ask him for graces, and if we do not ask he makes a loving complaint,
"Until now you have not asked anything.... Ask and you will receive, seek
and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you."

Furthermore, to give us more
confidence in praying to him, he has bound himself by a promise: that his
eternal Father would grant everything we ask in his name.

Forty-eighth Rose

145. As a fifth point, I must add perseverance and prayer. Only he who
perseveres in asking, seeking, and knocking, will receive, will find and will
enter. It is not enough to ask God for certain graces for a month, a year, ten
or twenty years; we must never tire of asking. We must keep on asking until the
very moment of death, and even in this prayer, which shows our confidence in
God, we must join the thought of death to that of perseverance and say,
"Although he should kill me, I will trust in him," will trust him to
give me what I ask.

146. Prominent and rich people of the world show their generosity by
foreseeing people's wants and ministering to them, even before they are asked
for anything. God's munificence, on the other hand, is shown by his making us
seek and ask, over a long period of time, for the graces which he wishes to
bestow, and the more precious the grace, the longer he takes to grant it:

1. in order to increase the
grace still more;

2. in order that the
recipient may more deeply appreciate it;

3. in order that the one who
receives it may guard against losing it; for people do not appreciate very much
what they obtain quickly and at little cost.

So, dear members of the
Confraternity, persevere in asking God for all your needs, both spiritual and
material, through the holy Rosary; especially should you pray for divine
Wisdom, which is "an infinite treasure," and there can be no possible
doubt that you will receive it sooner or later, provided you do not give up and
do not lose courage in the middle of your journey. "You still have a great
way to go."

You have a long way to
travel, there will be bad times to weather, many difficulties to overcome, and
many enemies to defeat before you will have stored up enough treasures for
eternity, enough Our Fathers and Hail Marys with which to buy your way to
heaven and win the glorious crown which awaits each faithful brother and sister
of the Confraternity.

"Let no one take your
crown": take care that your crown is not appropriated by another who has
been more faithful than you in saying his Rosary every day. "Your
crown": it was yours, God had prepared it for you; it was yours, you had
already half obtained it by your Rosaries well said. But because you stopped on
the way when you were running so well, another has left you behind and got
there first; another who is more diligent and more faithful has paid, by his
Rosaries and good works, what was required to obtain that crown.

"You began your race
well; who has hindered you?" Who has prevented you from having the crown
of the holy Rosary? Alas, none other than the enemies of the Rosary, who are so
numerous.

147. Believe me, it is only the violent who take it by force. These
crowns are not for the timid who are afraid of this world's taunts and threats,
neither are they for the lazy and indolent who only say their Rosary
carelessly, or hastily, just for the sake of getting it over with. The same
applies to people who say it intermittently, as the spirit moves them. These
crowns are not for cowards who lose heart and lay down their arms as soon as
they see hell is let loose against their Rosary.

Dear fellow-members, if you
want to serve Jesus and Mary by saying the Rosary every day, you must be
prepared for temptation: "If you aspire to serve the Lord, prepare
yourself for temptation." Heretics, licentious people, the so-called
respectable people of the world, persons of superficial piety, and false
prophets, hand in glove with your fallen nature and all hell itself - all will
wage terrible battles against you in an endeavour to make you give up this holy
practice.

148. To help you to be better armed against their onslaught - not so
much of acknowledged heretics and profligates as those who are considered
"respectable" in the eyes of the world, and even those who are devout
but have no use for the Rosary - I am going to tell you simply some of the things
these people are always saying and thinking.

"What does this babbler
want to say?" "Come, let us attack him, for he is against us."
What is he doing, saying so many Rosaries? What is it he is always mumbling?
Such laziness! He does nothing but keep on sliding those beads along, he would
do much better to work without amusing himself with such foolishness. Oh yes,
it's quite true, all you have to do is to say the Rosary and a fortune will
fall from heaven into your lap. The Rosary brings you all you need without
lifting a finger. But hasn't it been said, "God helps those who help
themselves"? Why load yourself with so many prayers? Brevis oratio
penetrat coelos; an Our Father and a Hail Mary well said are quite
sufficient. God has never commanded us to say the Rosary; of course it's all
right, it's not a bad devotion when you've got the time, but don't think for
one minute that people who say the Rosary are any more sure of heaven than we
are. Just look at the saints who never said it!

Far too many people want
everyone to see through their own eyes, people who lack prudence and carry
everything to extremes, scrupulous people who see sin almost everywhere, who
say that those who do not say the Rosary will be damned.

Oh yes, the Rosary is all
right for old women who can't read. But surely the Little Office of our Lady is
much more worthwhile, or the seven penitential psalms? Is there anything more
beautiful than those psalms which have been inspired by the Holy Spirit?

You say you have undertaken
to say the Rosary every day; that's just a flash in the pan, you know it won't
last. Wouldn't it be better to undertake less and be more faithful about it?
Come, my friend, take my word for it, say your morning and night prayers, work
hard during the day and offer it up. God does not ask any more than that. If
you didn't have your living to earn, as you have, you could commit yourself to
saying your Rosary. But as it is, say your Rosary on Sundays and Holidays when
you have plenty of time, but not on days when you have to work.

But really and truly, what
are you doing with that enormous pair of beads? I've seen a rosary of only one
decade, it's just as good as one of fifteen decades. Why on earth are you
wearing it on your belt, fanatic that you are? Why don't you go the whole way
and wear it round your neck like the Spaniards? They are great lovers of
rosaries; they carry a big rosary in one hand, while in the other they have a
dagger to give a treacherous stab. For goodness' sake drop these exterior
devotions; true devotion is in the heart. And so on.

149. Similarly, not a few clever people and learned scholars may
occasionally try to dissuade you from saying the Rosary, proud and critical
people, I mean. They would rather you said the seven penitential psalms or some
other prayers. If a good confessor has given you a Rosary for your penance, to
be said for a fortnight or a month, all you have to do to get your penance
changed to a few other prayers, fasts, alms or Masses, is to go to confession
to one of those gentlemen.

If you consult even some
people who live lives of prayer in the world, but who have never tried the
Rosary, they will not only not encourage it but will turn people away from it
to get them to learn contemplation, as if the Rosary and contemplation were
incompatible, as if all the saints who have been devoted to the Rosary had not
reached the heights of contemplation.

Your closest enemies will
attack you all the more cruelly because they are within you. I mean the powers
of your soul and your bodily senses, the distractions of the mind, distress and
uncertainty of the will, dryness of the heart, exhaustion and illness of the
body - all that will combine with the evil spirits to say to you, "Give up
your Rosary, that is what is giving you such a headache; give up your Rosary,
there is no obligation under pain of sin; at least say only a part of it; the
difficulties you are having are a sign that God does not want you to say it;
you can say it tomorrow when you are more in the mood." And so on.

150. Finally, my dear brothers and sisters, the daily Rosary has so
many enemies that I look upon the grace of persevering in it until death as one
of the greatest favours God can give us.

Persevere in it and your
fidelity will be rewarded with the wonderful crown which is prepared for you in
heaven: "Be faithful until death and I will give you the crown of
life."

Forty-ninth Rose

151. This is the time to say a little about the indulgences which have
been granted to Rosary Confraternity members, so that you may gain as many as
possible.

An indulgence, in general, is
a remission or relaxation of temporal punishment due to actual sins, by the
application of the super-abundant satisfactions of Jesus Christ, of the Blessed
Virgin and all the saints, which are contained in the treasury of the Church.

A plenary indulgence is a
remission of the whole punishment due to sin; a partial indulgence of, for
instance, a hundred or a thousand years can be explained as the remission of as
much punishment as could have been expiated during a hundred or a thousand
years, if one had been given a corresponding number of the penances prescribed
by the Church's ancient Canons.

Now these Canons exacted
seven and sometimes ten or fifteen years' penance for a single mortal sin, so
that a person who was guilty of twenty mortal sins would probably have had to
perform a seven year penance at least twenty times, and so on.

152. Members of the Rosary Confraternity who want to gain the
indulgences must:

1. Be truly repentant and go
to confession and communion, as the Papal Bull of indulgences states.

2. Be entirely free from
affection for venial sin, because if affection for sin remains, the guilt also
remains, and if the guilt remains the punishment cannot be lifted.

3. Say the prayers and
perform the good works designated by the Bull. If, in accordance with what the
Popes have said, one can gain a partial indulgence (for instance, of a hundred
years) without gaining a plenary indulgence, it is not always necessary to go
to confession and communion in order to gain it. Many such partial indulgences
are attached to the Rosary (either of five or fifteen decades), to processions,
blessed rosaries, etc. Do not neglect these indulgences.

153. Flammin and a great number of other writers tell the story of a
young girl of noble station named Alexandra, who had been miraculously
converted and enrolled by St. Dominic in the Confraternity of the Rosary. After
her death, she appeared to him and said she had been condemned to seven hundred
years in purgatory because of her own sins and those she had caused others to
commit by her worldly ways. So she implored him to ease her pains by his
prayers and to ask the Confraternity members to pray for the same end. St.
Dominic did as she had asked.

Two weeks later she appeared
to him, more radiant than the sun, having been quickly delivered from purgatory
by the prayers of the Confraternity members. She also told St. Dominic that she
had come on behalf of the souls in purgatory to beg him to go on preaching the
Rosary and to ask their relations to offer their Rosaries for them, and that
they would reward them abundantly when they entered into glory.

154. To make the recitation of the Rosary easier for you, here are
several methods which will help you to say it in a good and holy way, with the
meditation on the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries of Jesus and Mary.
Choose whichever method pleases you and helps you the most: or you can make up
one for yourself, as several holy people have done.

Copyright information: All videos and articles on our site are free to copy and share for free. Please remember to also include live links to the source of the information.
We are looking for translators who have the skill to make a good translation of important articles for the salvation of souls. We are also in need of translators who can translate Saint Bridget's Revelations into different languages. If you can help us on this important work, please contact us here.
We need your help! We are spending all the time our expenses among things like websites, webhotels, and giving away free material, dvds and books in order to warn people and tell them the truth. So if you like the material and want to help us—and be yourself a sharer—in saving souls, then please make a donation, pray for us and help us spread it in order to help our beloved brothers and sisters who have not found this information yet. If you have been graced by God with the means to do so, please support our work. Any donation that you can give is highly appreciated and much needed! Help us help our beloved brothers' and sisters' souls. Your Support Counts! All for the Glory of God and the salvation of souls! Please click here!
"And whosoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, amen I say to you, he shall not lose his reward." Matthew 10:42